Ca tholic. S ummer And Winter 

School LiBrAry. 

->k Science & Doctrine?}*- 

byRev.JA.Zahm C.S.C. 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Cliap,?.^ ^ynght^o. .... 

Shell.*. Zas 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
















































































Catholic Summer and Winter School Library 

NOW READY: 

Scientific Theory and Catholic Doctrine 

By The Rev. J. A. Zahm, C. S. C. 

• PREHISTORIC AMERICANS, 

by the Marquis De Nadaillac. 

Part I. “ The Mound Builders.” 

Part II. “ The Cliff Dwellers.” 

SUMMER SCHOOL ESSAYS. 

VOLUME I. 

“ Buddhism and Christianity,” by Mgr. De Harlez. 

“ Christian Science and Faith Cure,” by Dr. T. P. Hart. 
” Growth of Reading Circles," 

* by Rev. T. McMillan, C. S. P. 

“ Reading Circle Work,” by Rev. W. J. Dalton 
” Church Music,” by Rev. R. Fuhr, O. S. F. 

" Catholic Literary Societies,” by Miss K. E. Conway. 

” Historical Criticism,” by Rev. C. De Smedt, S.J. 

SUMMER SCHOOL ESSAYS. 

VOLUME II. 

“The Spanish Inquisition,” by Rev. J. F. Nugent. 

" Savonarola,” by Conde B. Pallen, Ph. D. 

“ Joan of Arc,” by J. W. Wilstach. 

“ Magna Charta,” by Prof. J. G. Ewing. 

“ Missionary Explorers of the Northwest,” 

by Judge W. L. Kelly. 

IN PREPARA TION: 

Church and State, by Rt. Rev. S. G. Messmer, D. D. 
The Sacred Scriptures, by Rev. P. J. Danehy, D. D. 
Literature and Faith, by Prof. M. F. Egan, LL. D. 

The Eastern Schism, by Rev. Jos. La Boule. 
Economics, by Hon. R. Graham Frost. 

Catholic Educational Development, 

by Rev. E. Magevney, S.J, 

Cloth, Price Per Volume, Fifty Cents. 


Catholic Summer and Winter School Library 


Scientific Theory 

and 

CATHOLIC DOCTRINE 



THE REVEREND J. A. ZAHM, Ph D., C. S. C. 

Professor of Physics in the University of Notre Dame. 

Author of "Sound and Music," "Bible Science and Faith," 
" Catholic Science and Catholic Scientists,” 
"Evolution and Dogma," etc. 


In necessariis unitas, in dubiis lib- 
ertas, in pmnibus caritas. 


AV 
/ v 


M Y * 

• CHICAGO 


D. H. McBRIDE & CO. 
1896 



Copyright, 1896 

BY 

J. A. ZAHM. 



TO 

MY POET FRIEND 

Maurice Francis Egan 






PREFACE 


j^HE present little work embraces my 
recent lectures before the Madi- 
son and Plattsburgh Summer Schools, 
and the Winter School of New Orleans. 
Aside from a few verbal changes, and a 
slightly different arrangement of the 
topics discussed, the subjects here 
treated retain their original form. The 
following chapters, it may also be re- 
marked, cover essentially the same 
ground as Part II of my more ex- 
tended work on “ Evolution and Dog- 
ma.” The chief, if not the sole, raison 
d'etre of the lectures in their present 
form was a desire on the part of the 
patrons of fhe Columbian Catholic Sum- 
mer School to have all the various lec- 
tures preserved in a series of uniform 
volumes or hand-books, which would be 
convenient for purposes of reference, 

7 


8 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

and would, at the same time, be a pre- 
sentable souvenir of the work actually 
accomplished at the school’s opening 
session. 

Regarding the various strictures the 
lectures have evoked, I have little to 
say, and that for the simple reason that 
most of my critics, so far as my obser- 
vation has extended, seem to have mis- 
apprehended entirely the position which 
I assumed, and to have attributed to me 
views which I as thoroughly reprobate 
as any one living. All reports to the 
contrary notwithstanding, I am neither 
a Darwinist nor a Huxleyan, for I have 
little faith in natural selection as a fac- 
tor of Evolution, and I certainly enter- 
tain no more sympathy for Agnosticism 
than do the most severe of my critics. 
This does not, however, imply that I 
have found nothing good in the works 
of Darwin and Huxley, or that I have 
discovered nothing to admire in their 
wonderful researches and discoveries. 
But because I do not accept the scien- 
tific theory which gave Darwin such 
notoriety, and because I condemn the 
philosophical views of the cosmos which 


PREFACE. 


9 


secured such a vogue for Huxley, it 
does not follow that I am bound to re- 
ject all the conclusions of these eminent 
votaries of science, or that I must in- 
dulge in philippics against them when- 
ever their names or theories are men- 
tioned. ' The first duty of the man of 
science, as well as the first duty of the 
philosopher and the theologian, is to 
seek the truth wheresoever it may be 
found. The treasures of Tyre and Sidon 
were employed to beautify the temple 
of Jerusalem; the riches of pagan an- 
tiquity enhance the glory of Christian 
Rome. 

That in the writings of the distin- 
guished English naturalists just named, 
as well as in the writings of many of 
their followers, there is a great deal of 
truth; that their authors have con- 
tributed much, very much, towards a 
wider and a truer knowledge of nature 
and nature’s laws, no one who is even 
slightly acquainted with the history of 
science can deny. That they fell into 
numerous errors in matters scientific, 
and advocated theories which are no 
longer tenable is equally true ; but it 


10 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


should never be forgotten in discussing 
the theories of men of science, that vitu- 
peration is not argument, that ridicule 
is not ratiocination, and that unfairness 
to an opponent is as illogical as it is 
unjust. The defenders of religion but 
weaken their cause by an indiscrimi- 
nate onslaught on scientific theories, 
as the champions of science lay them- 
selves open to suspicion, and prejudice 
their cause by uncalled-for diatribes 
against religion and the Church. For- 
tunately, such ill-advised represent- 
atives of science and faith are rapidly 
disappearing, and we may soon hope to 
see mooted questions of religion and 
science handled in that spirit of candor, 
moderation, and charity which should 
ever be dominant in all discussions that 
have for their ultimate object truth, and 
not controversial victory or the triumph 
of individual opinion. The sacredness 
of religion and the dignity of science 
demand from their true friends and ad- 
vocates both dignified treatment and 
dispassionate statement. The absence 
of these prerequisites is sure to impair 
views one would wish to defend, and 


PREFACE. 


11 


sure also to damage conclusions pro- 
posed for the acceptance of those who 
may not be of our way of thinking. 

In the subjects dealt with in the fol- 
lowing pages there is, no doubt, much 
room for differences of opinion, as there 
has been room for differences of opinion 
for thousands of years past. But this 
is no reason why now, or at any other 
time, a matter of merely individual 
opinion should be put forward as a dog- 
ma of the Church, or as an article of 
scientific faith. Theories in science, 
as well as personal views respecting the- 
ology and Scripture, must stand or fall 
according as they are sustained or not 
sustained by irrefragable evidence. In 
the discussion, therefore, of all questions 
in which the Church, not self-constituted 
inquisitors, permits liberty of thought, we 
should never lose sight of the saying, con- 
secrated by long usage: “In essential 
things, unity; in doubtful things, lib- 
erty; in all things, charity.” If the 
truth embodied in this proposition were 
never lost sight of, many controversies, 
which are now fruitless, or which defeat 
their purpose, would result in untold 


12 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

advantages to science as well as to reli- 
gion, and would tend to bring the ex- 
ponents of both the one and the other 
into friendlier relations, and would, at 
the same time, serve to remove misun- 
derstandings which should never have 
existed. 

Regarding the expediency of discus- 
sing the subject of Evolution before such 
audiences as are found at our Summer 
and Winter Schools, I can do no better 
than reproduce here what the Right 
Rev. S. G. Messmer, the learned and 
esteemed president of the Columbian 
Catholic Summer School, has said on the 
subject. 

Writing to a paper which had found 
fault with a part of the programme of 
lectures at the school, he says: “ Natur- 
ally, different heads entertain different 
ideas in this regard.” And then, after 
replying to the objection which had 
been raised against the advisability of 
giving lectures on the origin of the 
Bible, the history of the Canon, and cog- 
nate subjects, he continues as follows : 

“Similarly, the Holy Father has re- 
peatedly expressed the desire that the 


PREFACE. 


13 


cultured classes be given clear evidence 
of the limitless, erroneous complications 
of so-called modern science, and of the 
harmony between the Church’s doctrine 
and the incontestable data of the natural 
sciences. Dr. Zahm’s lectures corre- 
sponded to this desire. It is simply silly 
to maintain that such questions are the 
exclusive prerogative of the secret cir- 
cles of specialists and savants, since they 
are day after day brought before the 
general public by all manner of press 
products, newspapers, monthlies, books, 
and brochures, and are reasoned about 
by the masses. These very circum- 
stances evince the manifest need of 
elucidating as much as possible, to at 
least the more or less educated circles, 
the religious and social significance of 
such scientific themes, and their relation 
to Christian belief.” 

The action of the directors of the Co- 
lumbian Catholic Summer School in 
selecting Evolution and similar topics 
for discussion, had a precedent, if any 
were needed, in the example given by 
the International Catholic Scientific Con- 
gress of the Old World; a congress, 
which, it may be added, from its incep- 
tion to the present day, has ever been 
under the watchful guidance of the 


14 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 


Sovereign Pontiff, Leo XIII, and which 
has counted, and still counts, among its 
patrons and members many of the most 
eminent Cardinals of the Sacred College. 
At the sessions of the congress at Paris in 
1888 and 1891, the subject of Evolution 
was discussed with freedom and earnest- 
ness by both the laity and clergy. At 
the last meeting, at Brussels, it was felt 
on all hands that the time had come 
when it was necessary to determine the 
relation of Evolution to Catholic faith — 
“ pr4ciser l’etat de la question au point 
de vue Catholique.” 

merally recognized that the 



Evolution contains a great 


measure of truth, and that it, above all, 
possesses a special fascination for the 
young, and for students in colleges and 
universities. But it was also agreed 
that there is nothing in Evolution 
which should trouble the faith of Cath- 
olics, and nothing which justifies unbe- 
lievers in using the theory as an engine 
of war against the Church^V‘il ne faut 
pas que cette doctrine trouble la foi des 
croyants ne que les incredules posent 
en evolutionistes pour faire pi6ce k 


PREFACE. 


15 


l’lCglise.” And in order that a question 
of such general interest, and of such ac- 
knowledged importance might receive 
full and careful examination on the part 
of Catholics, the Rev. Padre Giovannozi, 
director of the astronomical observatory 
at Florence, Italy, proposed the follow- 
ing resolution as an expression of the 
attitude which should be assumed by 
the children of the Church regarding 
the question of Evolution: 

“ The section of Anthropology of the 
Third International Catholic Scientific 
Congress, assembled at Brussels, praises 
and encourages the studies of those who, 
under the supreme magisterium of the 
Church teaching, devote themselves to 
investigating the role which Evolution 
has had in concert with the second 
causes that have brought the physical 
world into its present condition.” 

This resolution was not only passed, 
but passed amid general acclamation. 

If, then, it is the Holy Father’s ex- 
pressed desire that the children of the 
Church should devote themselves to the 
study of the mutual relations of science 
and faith; if the most learned Catholic 
associaton in the world deemed it wise 


16 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

and opportune to pass a special resolu- 
tion favoring a more thorough investiga- 
tion of the status and claims of Evolu- 
tion ; if, in fine, it is most reasonable 
that Catholics should not be ignorant of 
a subject of such paramount importance 
as is the theory of Transformism, it is 
difficult to understand why, in certain 
quarters, there should lately have been 
such a hue and cry raised against a frank 
and honest discussion of Evolution and 
other kindred topics. 

Judging from my own experience, 
and it is not inconsiderable, false notions 
respecting current evolutionary theories 
have effected far more mischief among 
the faithful than is ordinarily supposed. 
By the press and from the rostrum such 
theories are discussed continually; they 
come up constantly in the school, the 
club, the drawing-room and the railroad 
car. Catholics must, therefore, take 
part in the discussion of these theories 
and of their bearing on revealed truth. 
And such being the case, it is in the 
highest degree desirable, nay, more, it is 
necessary, for them to be prepared to 
acquit themselves creditably in debates 


PREFACE. 


17 


which are so frequent and so unavoid- 
able. 

But where are they to get reliable in- 
formation on the subjects in question? 
Where are they to find answers to the 
many specious objections daily urged 
against their faith in the name of recent 
science and discovery? Surely not from 
those who are inimical to the Church and 
her teachings; not certainly from those 
who do not believe in God and in a fu- 
ture life; not from the apostles of infidel- 
ity, Naturalism, and Atheism; not from 
those who believe, or affect to believe, 
that there is an irreconcilable antagonism 
between nature and the Bible, between 
science and revelation. Where, then, 
are they to seek for guidance in their 
doubts and difficulties? Where are they 
to find materials which will be available 
in instruction and controversy? From 
Catholics who have made a special study 
of the topics which we are considering? 
But, then, it is objected that the discus- 
sion of such subjects on the part of 
Catholics is inexpedient and inoppor- 
tune. The absurdity of the objection is 
its best refutation. 

S.D.-2 


18 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 


Where, indeed, could the all-impor- 
tant question of Evolution be discussed 
more effectively and more profitably 
than before a large and intelligent body 
of the clergy and laity, such as assem- 
bles at our Summer and Winter Schools? 
Here are teachers from parochial schools; 
professors from academies and colleges; 
men and women from the various walks 
of life, who stand in special need of ac- 
curate knowledge, from a Catholic point 
of view, respecting questions they are 
so frequently called upon to answer. 
Ours, then, is the duty to supply the in- 
formation sought for, as far as in us lies; 
to show that there is a sense in which 
Evolution can be accepted by all Cath- 
olics; that there is nothing in the theory, 
so far as it is based on unassailable evi- 
dence, which contravenes any doctrine 
of the Church, or contradicts aiiy of the 
explicit declarations of Holy Writ, or 
renders less noble or less elevating the 
idea that Christians have ever enter- 
tained regarding “God the Father, Al- 
mighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” 
How far my humble attempt in this 
direction may be calculated to attain 


PREFACE. 


19 


the purpose in view, I leave to the 
reader to judge. What I can truly say 
is that this little work has been inspired 
by the best of intentions, or, as the old 
French writer quaintly phrased it: “Ceci 
est ung livre de bonne foy,” and as such 
I now send it forth to the reading 
public. 

J. A. Zahm, C.S.C. 

Notre Dame University, 

March 7, 1896. 





TABLE OE CONTENTS 

.. 


CHAPTER I. 

NATURE AND SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 

PAGES 

Early Speculation Regarding Nature and 
Man — Comprehensiveness of Evolution 
— Evolution Defined — Literature of Evo- 
lution — Freedom from Bias in the Dis- 
cussion of Evolution 25-87 


CHAPTER II. 

MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY, ERRORS IN DOC- 
TRINE AND MISTAKES IN TERMINOLOGY. 

Evolution and Darwinism — Evolution, Athe- 
ism and Nihilism — Evolution and Faith 
— Evolution and Science — Ignorance of 
Terms — Materialism and Dualism — 
Pantheism — Dogma of Creation — The 
Vatican Council on Creation — Meaning 
of the Word “Nature” — Nature and 

God 88-68 

21 


22 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


CHAPTER III. 

MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 

PAGES 

HiECKEL and Monism — Haeckel as a Scientist 
— Haeckel’s Nature-Philosophy — Five 
Propositions of Haeckel — God and the 
Soul — Organic and Inorganic Matter — 

The Religion of the Future — Haeckel’s 
Limitations — Verbal Jugglery — Type of 
a Class. 69-94 


CHAPTER IV. 

AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. 

Nature and Scope of Agnosticism — Huxley 
and Romanes — Docta Ignorantia — Ag- 
nosticism as a Via Media — Origin of 
the Universe — Spencer’s Unknowable — 
Sources of Agnosticism — Infinite Time 
— Infinite Spa.ce — Mysteries of Nature — 
Christian Agnosticism — Gods of the 
Positivist and the Agnostic 95-122 


CHAPTER V. 

THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 

Evolution and Faith — Teachings of St. 
Augustine — Views of the Angelic 
Doctor — Seminales Rationes — Crea- 
tion According to Scripture — The 
Divine Administration — Efficient Caus- 
ality of Creatures — Anthropomorphism — 
Divine Interference — Science and Crea- 
tion — Limitations of Specialists — Evo- 
lution and Catholic Teaching — The 
Scholastic Doctrine of Species — Milton 
and Ray 123-170 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


23 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 

PAGBS 

Spontaneous Generation — The Nature of 
Life — The Germ of Life — Abiogenesis 
— Artificial Production of Life — Proto- 
plasm 171-194 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 

The Missing Link — The Human Soul — Crea- 
tion of Man’s Body — Mivart’s Theory 
— Angelic Doctor on Creation of Adam 
— Views of Cardinal Gonzales — Inter- 
pretation Not Revelation 195-222 


CHAPTER VIII. 

TELEOLOGY, OLD AND NEW. 

The Doctrine of Final Causes — A Newer 
Teleology — Evolution and Teleology — 
Design and Purpose in Nature. . . . 223-233 


CHAPTER IX. 

RETROSPECT, REFLECTIONS AND CON- 
CLUSION. 

Evolution Not a New Theory — Darwinism 
Not Evolution — Evolution in the Future — 
Evolution Not Antagonistic to Religion 
— Objections Against New Theories — 
Galileo and the Copernican Theory — 
Conservatism in Science — Conflict of 
Opinions Beneficial — Evolution and 
Creationism — Errors in the Infancy of 


24 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


PAGBS 

Science — Science Not Omnipotent — Bank- 
ruptcy of Science — Conquests of Science 
— Evidences of Design and Purpose — 
Evolution, Scripture and Theology — Evo- 
lution and Special Creation — Genesiac 
Days, Flood, Fossils and Antiquity of 
Man — Eminent Catholics on Evolution — 

Faith Has Nothing to Apprehend from 
Evolution — Misapprehensions Regarding 
Evolution — Evolution, an Ennobling Con- 
ception 234-304 


i 


CHAPTER I. 


NATURE AND SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 

Early Speculation Regarding Nature and Man. 

jp^ROM time immemorial philosophers 
and students of nature have ex- 
hibited a special interest in all ques- 
tions pertaining to the origin of man, of 
the earth on which he lives and of the 
universe to which he belongs. The 
earliest speculations of our Aryan fore- 
fathers were about the beginnings of 
things. Questions of cosmology, as we 
learn from the tablets preserved in the 
great library of Assurbanipal in Nineveh, 
received their meed of attention from 
the sages of ancient Assyria and Baby- 
lonia. And long before Assyria, Baby- 
lonia and Chaldea had reached the 
zenith of their power, and before they 
had attained that intellectual eminence 
which so distinguished them among the 
nations of the ancient world, the peoples 
of Accad and Sumer had raised and 

25 


26 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 

discussed questions of geogony and cos- 
mogony. They were a philosophical 
race, these old Accadians and Sumerians, 
and, as we learn from the records which 
are constantly being exhumed in Meso- 
potamia, they had a breadth of view and 
an acuteness of intellect, which, consid- 
ering their environment and the age in 
which they lived, were simply astonish- 
ing. Well have they been called “the 
teachers of Greece,” for all the subtlety 
of thought and keenness of perception, 
all the love of science, art and letters, 
which were so characteristic of the 
Greek mind, were possessed in an emi- 
nent degree by those old pre- Baby Ionian 
masters who thought and taught and 
wrote many long generations before 
Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, un- 
told centuries before Thales taught and 
Homer sang. And the musings of the 
mystic Hindu along the banks of the 
Indus and the Ganges ; the meditations 
of the Egyptian priest in the temples of 
Memphis and Heliopolis ; the specula- 
tions of the wise men of Attica and 
Ionia, all turned more or less on the 
same topics which possessed such a 


NATURE AND SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 27 

fascination for the sages of old Chaldea, 
and which were discussed with such zest 
in the schools of Nineveh and Babylon. 

Whence are we ? Whither are we 
going ? Whence this earth of ours and 
the plants and animals which make it 
their home ? Whence the sun, and 
moon and stars — those distant and 
brilliant, yet mysterious representatives 
of our visible universe ? Did they 
have a beginning, or have they existed 
from all eternity ? And if they had a 
beginning, are they the same now as 
they were when they first came into 
existence, or have they undergone 
changes, and, if so, what are the nature 
and the factors of such changes ? Are 
the development and mutations of 
things to be referred to the direct and 
immediate action of an all-powerful 
Creator, or are they rather to be attrib- 
uted to the operation of certain laws of 
nature— laws which admit of determina- 
tion by human reason, and which, when 
known, serve as a norm in our investi- 
gations and experiments in the organic 
and inorganic worlds ? Are there 
special interventions on the part of a 


28 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Supreme Being in the government of the 
universe, and are we to look for frequent, 
if not constant, exhibitions of the mirac- 
ulous in the natural world ? Has God’s 
first creation of the universe and all it 
contains, of the earth and all that in- 
habits it, been followed bj other crea- 
tions at divers periods, and if so, when 
and where has such creative power 
been manifested ? 

These are a few of the many questions 
about the genesis and development of 
things which men asked themselves in 
the infancy of our race. And these are 
questions which philosophers are still 
putting to themselves, and which, not- 
withstanding the many thousands of 
years during which they have been un- 
der discussion, have to-day a greater 
and more absorbing interest than in any 
former period of human history. 

It is beside my present purpose to 
enumerate the various theories in science 
to which the discussion of the questions 
just propounded has given rise, or to 
dwell on the divers systems of philosophy 
and religion which have been the 
natural outgrowth of such or similar 


NATURE AND SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 29 

discussions. Materialism, Pantheism, 
Emanationism, Hylozoism, Traducian- 
ism, Atheism and other isms innumer- 
able have always been, as they are 
to-day, more or less closely identified 
with many of the speculations regarding 
the origin and constitution of the visible 
universe. And despite the great ad- 
vances which have been made in our 
knowledge of nature and of the laws 
which govern the organic and inorganic 
worlds, many of the questions which so 
agitated the minds of the philosophers 
of the olden time, are still as far from 
solution as they were when first pro- 
posed. New facts and new discoveries 
have placed the old problems in a new 
light, but have diminished none of their 
difficulties. On the contrary, the bril- 
liant search-light of modern science has 
disclosed new difficulties which were 
before invisible, and proved that those 
which were considered before are in 
many respects far graver than was for- 
merly imagined. With the advance of 
science, and the progress of discovery, 
many problems, it is true, find their 
solution, but others, hydra -like, arise in 


30 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

their place and obtrude themselves on 
the scientist and philosopher, and will 
not down until they have received due 
recognition. 

Comprehensiveness of Evolution. 

To answer some, if not all, of the 
questions just alluded to ; to explain the 
phenomena of the cosmos ; to solve the 
problems of life and mind, and throw 
light on the beginning and development 
of things, recourse is now had to a sys- 
tem of philosophy and science which, 
within the last few decades, has at- 
tained a special vogue under the name 
of Evolutionism, or, as its adepts prefer 
to call it, Evolution. Evolution, we are 
assured, is the magic word which ex- 
plains all difficulties ; the “ open ses- 
ame ” which admits us into the innermost 
arcana of nature. We are told of the 
Evolution of the earth, of the Evolution 
of the solar system, of the Evolution of 
the sidereal universe. Men discourse 
on the Evolution of life, the Evolution 
of the organic and inorganic worlds, the 
Evolution of the human race. We have 
similarly the Evolution of society, gov- 


NATURE AND SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 31 

ernment, religion, language, art, science, 
architecture, music, literature, chemistry, 
physics, mathematics, and the various 
other branches of knowledge as well. 
We now talk of the Evolution of the 
steamboat, the locomotive, the dynamo, 
the machine-gun, the telescope, the 
yacht and the bicycle. All that minis- 
ters to comfort, luxury and fashion are 
objects of Evolution. Hence it is that 
we hear people speak of the Evolution 
of the modern house-furnace and the 
cooking-stove ; the Evolution of the 
coach and the dog-cart ; the Evolution 
of seal -skin sacques, high -heeled shoes 
and of that periodically recurrent bete 
noire of fond husbands and indulgent 
papas, the latest pattern of a lady’s 
hat. Anything which has developed or 
improved — and what has not ? — is 
spoken of as having come under the 
great law of Evolution, and, presto ! all 
is explained, and any little enigmas 
which before may have existed instantly 
vanish. 

As is evident from the forego- 
ing, Evolution may mean a great deal, or 
it may mean little or nothing. It is 


32 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

manifestly a term of very general appli- 
cation and may often be very misleading. 
Properly understood it may be of signal 
service to the searcher after truth, while, 
on the contrary, if it is constituted an 
ever-ready deus ex machine , capable of 
solving all difficulties, it may lead to in- 
extricable confusion and tend to obscure 
what it was designed to illumine. It is 
obvious, too, that we must restrict the 
meaning of the word Evolution, for it 
does not come within the scope of our 
work to speak of Evolution in general. 
We have to consider only a particular 
phase of it, and for this purpose it is im- 
portant to have a definition of what is 
meant by Evolution. 

Evolution Defined. 

Herbert Spencer, who is regarded by 
his admirers as the great philosopher of 
Evolution, defines it to be a “ change 
from an indefinite, incoherent homo- 
geneity, to a definite, coherent hetero- 
geneity; through continuous differentia- 
tions and integrations.” 

“And the operation of Evolution,” 
continues the same authority, “is abso- 


NATURE AND SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 33 

lutely universal. Whether it be in the 
development of the earth, in the develop- 
ment of life upon its surface, in the de- 
velopment of society, of government, of 
manufactures, of commerce, of language, 
of literature, science, art, this same ad- 
vance from the simple to the complex, 
through successive differentiations, holds 
uniformly. From the earliest traceable 
cosmical changes down to the latest re- 
sults of civilization, we shall find that 
the transformation of the homogeneous 
into the heterogeneous, is that in which 
Evolution essentially consists.” 

Spencer’s definition, however, exact 
as it may be deemed, embraces far more 
than we shall have occasion to consider, 
for my task shall be confined to the Evo- 
lution of the earth and its inhabitants, 
and only incidentally shall I refer to 
cosmic Evolution. Indeed, properly 
speaking, the Evolution of which I shall 
treat shall be limited almost entirely to 
organic Evolution, or the Evolution of 
the plants and animals which live or 
have lived on this earth of ours. All 
references, therefore, to the Evolution 
of the earth itself from its primeval 
nebulous state, and to the Evolution of 
organic from inorganic matter, will be 
s. D.— 8 


34 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


mostly by way of illustration, and in 
order to show that there is no breach of 
continuity between organic Evolution, 
which is my theme, and inorganic or 
cosmic Evolution. 

Literature of Evolution. 

The subject is a vast one, and to treat 
it adequately would require far more 
space than I have at my disposal. It 
has indeed a literature and a bibliogra- 
phy of its own — a literature whose pro- 
portions are already stupendous, and 
are daily, and with amazing rapidity, 
becoming more colossal. For the past 
third of a century, since the publication 
of Darwin’s “ Origin of Species,” it has 
been uppermost in the minds of every- 
one given to thinking on serious sub- 
jects. Everybody talks about Evolu- 
tion, and more write about it than about 
any other one subject. 

Such being the case, it will evidently 
be impossible for me to do more than 
briefly indicate the status of Evolution 
to-day in the world of thought, religious, 
scientific and philosophic. It is some- 
thing that one cannot develop dans un 


NA TURE AND SCOPE OF EVOL VTION. 35 


mot , as a certain French lady expected 
of a noted savant, when asking him to 
explain his system of philosophy. For 
a similar reason, also, I can discuss but 
briefly the bearings of Evolution on re- 
ligion and Catholic dogma. I shall, 
therefore, have to limit myself to a few 
general propositions, and refer those 
who desire a more exhaustive treat- 
ment of the subjects discussed, to the 
many elaborate and learned works that 
have been given to the world during 
the past few decades. 

Freedom from Bias in the Discussion of Evo- 
lution. 

I may here be permitted, before go- 
ing further, to remind the reader that it 
is of prime importance, in the discussion 
of the subject of Evolution, especially 
in its relation to religion and dogma, for 
one to weigh fairly and dispassionately 
the arguments and objections of evolu- 
tionists, and to divest one’s self of all 
bias that may proceed from prejudice or 
early education, to consider the question 
on its merits, and not to let one’s mind 
be swayed by preconceived, or it may 


36 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

be, by erroneous notions. Let the value 

of the evidence adduced be estimated 

by the rules of logic and in the light of 

reason. This is essential. In the dis- 
% 

cussion of the subject during the past 
thirty and odd years much has been said 
in the heat of controversy, and on both 
sides, that had no foundation in fact. 
There have been much exaggeration 
and misrepresentation, which have given 
rise to difficulties and complications that 
might easily have been avoided if the 
disputants on both sides had always 
been governed by a love of truth, and 
the strict rules of dialectics, rather than 
by passion and the spirit of party. Mis- 
guided zeal and ignorance of the true 
teachings of the Church, always betray 
one into making statements which have 
no foundation in fact, but, in the discus- 
sions to which the subject of Evolution 
has given rise, there has often been ex- 
hibited, by both the defendants and the 
opponents of the theory, a lack of fair- 
ness and a bitterness of feeling that are 
certainly not characteristic of those whose 
sole desire is the attainment of truth. 
Such polemics have injured both parties, 


NATURE AND SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 37 

and have delayed a mutual under- 
standing that should have, and would 
have been reached years ago if the 
ordinary rules of honest controversy 
had always been inviolably observed. 

Now that the smoke of battle is be- 
ginning to vanish, and that the partici- 
pants in the contest have time to reckon 
results and to look back to the causes 
which precipitated the struggle, it is 
found, and I think generally conceded, 
that certain of the representatives of 
science were the ones who brought on 
an imbroglio for which there was not the 
slightest justification. But it is the old 
story over again : hatred of religion 
concealed behind some new discovery 
of science or enveloped in some theory 
that, for the nonce, was raised to the 
dignity of an indisputable dogma. It 
was not, it is true, so much the chief rep- 
resentatives of science who were to 
blame as some of their ill-advised 
asseclce, who saw in the new teachings 
an opportunity of achieving notoriety, 
and, at the same time, of venting their 
spleen against the Church and casting 
obloquy on religion and Scripture. 


CHAPTER II. 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY, ERRORS 
IN DOCTRINE AND MISTAKES 
IN TERMINOLOGY. 

Evolution and Darwinism. 

|plfHE question now is: How are we to 
envisage the process of Evolution, 
and what limits are we to assign to it? 
Is it as universal in its action as it is 
usually claimed to be, or is the sphere 
of its activity restricted and confined 
within certain definite, fixed limits, be- 
yond which it may not extend? And 
then, a far more important question 
comes to the fore, and that is, how is 
faith affected by Evolution, or in other 
words, what is the attitude of Dogma 
towards Evolution? 

To this last question various answers 
have been given, many of them contra- 
dictory, more of them absurd, few of 
them satisfactory or philosophical. All 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 39 

remember the storm that was raised 
against Darwinism on its first appear- 
ance, a few decades ago. Darwinism, 
however, is not Evolution, as is so often 
imagined, but only one of the numerous 
attempts which have been made to ex- 
plain the modus operandi of Evolution. 
Nevertheless, for a long time Darwin- 
ism and Evolution were regarded as 
synonymous — as in the popular mind 
they are still synonymous — even by 
those who should have been better in- 
formed. The objections which were 
advanced against Darwinism were urged 
against Evolution* and vice versa. And 
in most of the controversies relating to 
these topics there was a lamentable, 
often a ridiculous, ignorance of the 
teachings of the Church, and this, more 
than anything else, accounts for the 
odium theologicum, and the odium sci- 
entificum , which have been so conspicu- 
ous in religious and scientific literature 
during the past third of a century. 

During the first few years after the 
publication of “ The Origin of Species,” 
there were but few, even among pro- 
fessed men of science, who did not 


40 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

condemn Darwinism as irreligious in 
tendency, if not distinctly atheistic in 
principle. “ Materialistic ” and “ pan- 
theistic,” were, however, the epithets 
usually applied both to Evolution and 
the theory so patiently elaborated by 
Darwin. Prof. Louis Agassiz, as we 
have already seen, did not hesitate to 
denounce “ the transmutation theory as 
a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, 
unscientific in its method, and mischiev- 
ous in its tendency.” Certain others of 
Darwin’s critics characterized his theory 
as “an acervation of endless conjec- 
tures,” as an “utterly rotten fabric of 
guess and speculation,” and reprobated 
his “ mode of dealing with nature ” as 
“ utterly dishonorable to natural sci- 
ence,” and as contradicting “the re- 
vealed relation of the creation to its 
Creator.” 

Darwinism was spoken of as “ an at- 
tempt to dethrone God; ” as “the only 
form of infidelity from which Christian- 
ity has anything to fear; ” as doing 
“ open violence to everything which the 
Creator Himself has told us in the 
Scriptures of the methods and results 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 


41 

of His work.” It was declared to be 
“a dishonoring view of nature;” “a 
jungle of fanciful assumption;” and 
those who accepted it were said to be 
“ under the frenzied inspiration of the 
inhaler of mephitic gas.” “ If the Dar- 
winian theory is true,” averred another, 
“ Genesis is a lie, the whole framework 
of the Book of Life falls to pieces, and the 
revelation of God to man, as we Chris- 
tians know it, is a delusion and a snare.” 

Evolution naturally shared in the de- 
nunciations hurled against Darwinism, 
It was designated as “a philosophy of 
mud;” as “the baldest of all the phi- 
losophies which have sprung up in our 
world; ” as “a flimsy framework of hy- 
pothesis, constructed upon imaginary 
or irrelevant facts, with a complete de- 
parture from every established canon of 
scientific investigation.” It was stig- 
matized as “ flatly opposed to the funda- 
mental doctrine of creation,” and as 
discharging God “from the governing 
of the world.” The distinguished Ca- 
nadian geologist, Sir J. W. Dawson, in 
speaking of the subject, affirms that 
“ the doctrine [of Evolution] as carried 


42 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

out to its logical consequences excludes 
creation and Theism. It may, however, 
be shown, that even in its more modified 
forms, and when held by men who 
maintain that they are not atheists, it is 
practically atheistic, because excluding 
the idea of plan and design, and resolv- 
ing all things into the action of unintel- 
ligent forces.” 

Evolution, Atheism and Nihilism. 

To judge from the declarations of 
some of the most ardent champions of 
Evolution, it must be admitted that 
orthodoxy had reason to be at least sus- 
picious, of the theory that was heralded 
forth with such pomp and circumstance. 
For it was announced with the loudest, 
flourish of trumpets, not only that Evo- 
lution is a firmly established doctrine, 
about whose truth there can no longer 
be any doubt, but it was also boldly de- 
clared, by some of its most noted ex- 
ponents, to be subversive of all religion 
and of all belief in a Deity. Mate- 
rialists, atheists, and anarchists the 
world over, loudly proclaimed that 
there is no God, because, they would 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 43 

have it, science had demonstrated that 
there is no longer any raison d’etre for 
such a Being. Evolution, they claimed, 
takes the place of creation, and eternal, 
self-existent matter and force exclude 
an omnipotent personal Creator. “God,” 
we are told, “is the world, infinite, 
eternal, and unchangeable in its being 
and in its laws, but ever- varying in its 
correlations.” A glance at the works 
of Haeckel, Vogt, Buchner, and others 
of this school, is sufficient to prove how 
radical and rabid are the views of these 
“advanced thinkers.” 

It was in consequence of the circula- 
tion of such views among the masses, 
that Virchow and others declared Evo- 
lution responsible, not only for the at- 
tempts made by Hbdel and Nobeling 
on the life of the German Emperor but 
also for all the miseries and horrors 
of the Paris Commune. For the theory 
of Evolution, in its atheistic form, is one 
of the cardinal tenets of nihilists, and 
their device is: “Neither God, nor 
master,” Ni Dieu , ni maitre. It is at 
the bottom of the philosophy of the 
Krapotkins and R£clus, who “ see in the 


44 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

hive and the ant-hill the only funda- 
mental rule of right and wrong, although 
bees destroy one class of their number 
and ants are as warlike as Zulus.” And 
we all remember how Vaillant, the 
bomb-thrower in the Chamber of 
Deputies, boastfully posed as the logical 
executant of the ideas of the Darwins 
and the Spencers, whose teachings, he 
contended, he was but carrying out to 
their legitimate conclusions. 

Evolution and Faith. 

But all evolutionists have not enter- 
tained, and do not entertain, the same 
opinions as those just mentioned. Amer- 
ica’s great botanist, Prof. Asa Gray, 
was not so minded. One of the earliest 
and most valiant defenders of Darwinism, 
as well as a professed Christian believer, 
he maintained that there is nothing in 
Evolution, or Darwinism, which is in- 
compatible with Theism. In an interest- 
ing chapter on Evolution and Theol- 
ogy, in his “ Darwiniana,” he gives 
it as his opinion, arrived at after long 
consideration, that “ Mr. Darwin has no 
atheistical intent, and that, as respects 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 45 

the test question of design in nature, 
his view may be made clear to the 
theological mind by likening it to that 
of the believer in general, but not in 
particular, Providence.” So far, in- 
deed, was Darwin from having any 
“ atheistical intent,” that when interro- 
gated regarding certain of his religious 
views he replied : “ In my most extreme 
fluctuations I have never been an atheist 
in the sense of denying the existence of 
God.” And the late Dr. McCosh de- 
clared, that he had “ never been able to 
see that religion, and in particular that 
Scripture, in which our religion is em- 
bodied, is concerned with the absolute 
immutability of species.” 

The illustrious Dominican confer en- 
cier , Father Monsabr6, records it as his 
opinion that the theory of Evolution, 
“ far from compromising the orthodox 
belief in the creative action of God, re- 
duces this action to a small number of 
transcendent acts, more in conformity 
with the unity of the Divine plan and 
the infinite wisdom of the Almighty, 
Who knows how to employ secondary 
causes to attain His ends.” This is in 


46 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

keeping with the view of the distin- 
guished German Catholic writer, Doc- 
tor C. Guttler, who asserts that “Darwin 
has eliminated neither the concept of 
creation, nor that of design; that, on 
the contrary, he has ennobled both the 
one and the other. He does not remove 
teleology, but merely puts it farther 
back.” 

Evolution and Science. 

But there are yet others to be heard 
from. According to Huxley, who is an 
avowed agnostic, the “ doctrine of Evo- 
lution is neither anti-theistic nor theistic. 
It simply has no more to do with Theism 
than the first book of Euclid has.” It 
will be observed that with Huxley, Ev- 
olution is neither a hypothesis nor a 
theory, but a doctrine. So is it with 
many others of its advocates. It is no 
longer something whose truth may be 
questioned, but something- which has 
been established permanently on the 
solid foundation of facts. It has, we 
are assured, successfully withstood all 
the ordeals of observation and experi- 
ment, and is now to be counted among 
those acquisitions of science which 


misconceptions of theory. 


47 


admit of positive demonstration. Thus, 
a few years ago, in an address before the 
American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, Prof. Marsh said: 

“ I need offer no argument for Evolu- 
tion, since to doubt Evolution is to doubt 
science, and science is only another 
name for truth.” 

“ The theory of Evolution,” writes 
M. Ch. Martins, in the Revue de Deux 
Mondes, “ links together all the ques- 
tions of natural history, as the laws of 
Newton have connected all the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies. This 
theory has all the characters of New- 
tonian laws.” 

Prof. Joseph Le Conte, however, goes 
much further: 

“We are confident,” he declares, “ that 
Evolution is absolutely certain, not in- 
deed Evolution as a special theory— 
Lamarckian, Darwinian, Spencerian — 
but Evolution as a law of derivation of 
forms from previous forms; Evolution 
as a law of continuity, as a universal 
law of becoming. In this sense it is not 
only certain, it is axiomatic.” 

Ignorance of Terms. 

But, wherefore, it may be asked, have 
we such diverse and conflicting opinions 


48 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE 

regarding the nature and tendency of 
Evolution? Why is it that some still 
persist in considering it a “ flimsy hy- 
pothesis,” while others as stoutly main- 
tain that it is a firmly established doc- 
trine? Why is it that some believe it 
to be neutral and indifferent, so far as 
faith is concerned, and others find in its 
tenets illustrations and corroborations of 
many of the truths of Dogma ; that there 
are so many who see, or fancy they see 
in it, the negation of God, the destruc- 
tion of religion, and the subversion of 
all order, social and political? These 
are questions which are frequently asked, 
and that press themselves upon even the 
most superficial reader. Are they in- 
soluble? Must they be relegated for- 
ever to the domain of paradox and mys- 
tery, or is there even a partial explanation 
to be offered for such clashing opinions 
and such glaring contradictions? With 
all due deference to the judgment of 
those who see nothing good in Evolu- 
tion, nothing which must not inconti- 
nently be condemned as false and in- 
iquitous, I think that the enigma may 
be solved, and that it may be shown that 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 49 

the contradictions, as is usually the case 
in such matters, are due mostly, if not. 
wholly, to an ignoratio elenchi, a mis- 
apprehension of terms, or to a deliberate 
intention of exploiting a pet theory at 
the expense of religion and Dogma, 
which are ostentatiously repudiated as 
based on superstition and falsehood. 

The two words most frequently mis- 
understood and misemployed are “ crea- 
tion ” and “ nature.” They are of con- 
stant occurrence in all scientific treatises, 
but no one who is not familiar with the 
writings of modern evolutionists has 
any conception of the extent to which 
these terms are misapplied. For this 
reason, therefore, it is well, before pro- 
ceeding further, briefly to indicate the 
meaning which Catholic theology at- 
taches to these much-abused words. 

Materialism and Dualism. 

From the earliest times, the dogma of 
creation has been a stumbling-block to 
certain students of science and philoso- 
phy. The doctrines, however, which 
have met with most general acceptance 
regarding the origin and constitution of 
s. D.— 4 


50 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


the universe, can be reduced to a few 
typical and comprehensive classes. 

First of all, comes the Materialism of 
Leucippus and Democritus, of Heracli- 
tus, and of Empedocles, of Epicurus and 
the philosophers of the Ionian school. 
The only reality they recognized was 
matter. Simple atoms, infinite in num- 
ber, eternal and uncreated, moving 
eternally in a void infinite in extent, 
are, of themselves, the only postulate 
demanded by materialists to explain the 
universe and all the phenomena which 
it exhibits. It excludes the interven- 
tion of an intelligent cause, and attrib- 
utes all life and thought to the mere in- 
teraction of the ultimate atoms of brute 
matter. Morality, according to this 
teaching, is but “ a form of the morality 
of pleasure,” religion is the outcome of 
fear and superstition, and God the 
name of a being who has no existence 
outside of the imaginations of the igno- 
rant and the self -deceived. 

Materialism, as is obvious, is but an- 
other name for Atheism, and is a blank 
negation of creation as well as of 
God. 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 51 

“ Rigorously speaking,” M. Caro well 
observes, “ Materialism has no history, 
or, at least, its history is so little varied 
that it can be given in a few lines. 
Under what form soever it presents 
itself, it is immediately recognized by the 
absolute simplicity of the solutions which 
it proposes. Contemporary Materialism 
has in nowise changed the framework 
of this philosophy of twenty centuries’ 
standing. It has never deviated from 
its original program; it has but been 
enriched with scientific notions; it has 
been transformed in appearance only, 
by being surcharged with the data, the 
views, the hypotheses, infinite in num- 
ber, which are the outgrowth of the 
physical, chemical, and physiological 
sciences. Democritus would easily 
recognize his teaching, if he were to 
read the works of M. Btichner; even the 
language used has undergone but a 
trifling change.” 

Indeed, “ the history of Materialism,” 
as has well been remarked, “may be 
reduced to indicating the influence 
which it has exercised at divers epochs, 
and to recording the names of its most 
famous representatives.” 

The advocates of Dualism, like the 
defenders of Materialism, taught the 


52 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

eternity of matter, but in addition to 
eternal, uncreated matter, recognized 
the existence of a personal God. Many 
of the philosophers of antiquity, who 
escaped the errors of Materialism and 
Pantheism, fell headlong into those of 
Dualism, which possessed as many forms 
as Proteus himself. Thus, the Mani- 
cheans asserted the existence of two 
principles, one good, the other evil; the 
former the creator of souls, the latter 
the creator of bodies. According to 
the gnostics the world is the work of the 
angels, and not the immediate result of 
Divine creative action. Even accord- 
ing to J. Stuart Mill, matter is un- 
created and eternal. God, he will have 
it, but fashioned the universe out of 
# self-existent material, and far from be- 
ing the Creator of the world, in the 
strict acceptation of the term, is but its 
architect and builder. 

Both Materialism and Dualism are 
one in asserting the eternity of matter. 
Materialism, however, is atheistic, in 
that it excludes a Creator, while Dual- 
ism, although rejecting creation, prop- 
erly so called, admits the existence of a 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 53 

Supreme Being. But God, according 
to dualists, is little more than a demi- 
urge. He is powerful, but not omnipo- 
tent. The eternal, self-existent matter 
which is postulated, and which exists 
outside of God, rebels against His ac- 
tion, and becomes a cosmic power 
against which He is powerless. 

Pantheism. 

Pantheism is the opposite of Material- 
ism. According to the latter, as we 
have seen, everything is matter; accord- 
ing to the former, as the word indicates, 
everything is God. The finite and the 
infinite; the contingent and the neces- 
sary; beings, which appear in time, and 
God, Who is from eternity, are, accord- 
ing to the teachings of pantheists, but 
different aspects of the same existence. 
Whether we consider the emanation of 
the Brahmans, the Pantheism of the 
Eleatics, or that of the neo-Platonists of 
Alexandria, or that of Spinoza, Fichte, 
Schelling and Hegel, the doctrines so 
taught issue in the negation of creation 
as well as in the negation of the true 
nature of God. For to predicate, in 


54 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


what manner soever, an identity of God 
with the world, or to conceive God as 
the material principle, or the primal 
matter, from which everything ema- 
nates, as pantheists do, is to negative 
completely not only the Christian idea 
of God, a Being eternal, spiritual in 
substance, and distinct from the world 
in reality and essence, but also the 
Christian and the only true idea of cre- 
ation. 

Having briefly adverted to some of 
the principal philosophical doctrines 
which exclude creation in the Christian 
and Scriptural sense, and having given 
a hasty glance at some of the more 
widely-spread errors respecting the 
nature of the Creator and His creatures, 
we are now prepared to consider the 
teachings of Catholic philosophy and 
theology as to creation, and as to the 
origin and nature of the material uni- 
verse. 

Dogma of Creation. 

Creation, in its strictest sense, is the 
production, by God, of something from 
nothing. The universe and all it con- 
tains was called into existence ex nihilo, 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 55 

by an act of the Creator, which was not 
only supernatural, but also absolute and 
free. It was, therefore, in no wise 
formed from preexisting material, for 
none existed, nor by any emanation 
from the Divine substance. God alone 
is necessary and eternal; the world of 
matter and the world of spirit, outside 
of God, are contingent, and have their 
existence in time. But, notwithstand- 
ing that the nature of the world of 
created things is finite, and entirely 
different from the Divine nature, which 
alone is infinite and necessary, neverthe- 
less, all the creatures of God have a 
real existence, although limited in its 
duration and dependent entirely on 
Divine Providence for its continuance. 

A secondary meaning of the word 
“creation,” is the formation, by God, of 
something from preexisting material. 
This is the natural action of God in the 
ordaining or administering of the world, 
as distinguished from the supernatural 
act of absolute creation from nothing. 
In this sense God is said to create 
derivatively, or by the agency of second- 
ary causes. He creates potentially; 


56 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


that is, He gives to matter the power of 
producing or evolving, under suitable 
conditions, all the manifold forms it 
may ever assume. In the beginning 
He created matter directly and abso- 
lutely, once for all; but to the matter 
thus created He added certain natural 
forces — what St. Augustine calls rationes 
seminales — and put it under the action 
of certain laws, which we call “ the laws 
of nature.” Through the operation of 
these laws, and in virtue of the powers 
conferred on matter in the beginning, 
God produces indirectly, derivatively, 
by the operation of secondary causes, 
all the various forms which matter may 
subsequently assume, and all the divers 
phenomena of the physical universe. 

In another sense, also, the word 
“creation” may be employed, as when 
we speak of the creations of genius, or 
refer to creations of Raphael, Michael 
Angelo, or Brunelleschi. In these cases, 
the work of the artist or of the architect 
consists simply in making use of the 
laws, and powers and materials of 
nature, in such wise as to effect a change 
in form or condition. The action of the 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 57 

intelligent agents in this case being 
natural, but more than physical, may 
conveniently be designated as hyper- 
physical. 

With hyperphysical creation we shall 
have little to do. Our chief concern 
will be with absolute, or direct creation, 
and w T ith secondary or derivative crea- 
tion, both of which are so often misun- 
derstood and confounded, if not 
positively denied. It would, indeed, 
seem that the sole aim and purpose of a 
certain school of modern scientists, is to 
discover some means of evading the 
mystery of creation. For they not only 
deny creation, but also deny its possi- 
bility, and all this because, they with 
“ the fool,” persist in saying in their hearts 
“ There is no God.” So great, indeed, 
is their hatred of the words “Creator” 
and “ creation,” that they would, if pos- 
sible, obliterate them from the diction- 
ary, and consign all works containing 
them to eternal oblivion. 

The Vatican Council on Creation. 

For a clear and succinct statement of 
Catholic doctrine, in respect of God as 


58 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

Creator of all things, as well as for an 
expression of the Church regarding the 
errors of Materialism and Pantheism 
now so rife, we can have nothing better 
or more pertinent to our present subject 
than the constitution and canons of the 
Vatican Council : “ De Deo, Rerum 

Omnium Creatore.” 

The “ Dogmatic Constitution of the 
Catholic Faith,” in reference to “God, 
the Creator of all things,” reads as 
follows : 

“The Holy Catholic Apostolic Ro- 
man Church believes and confesses, 
that there is one true and living 
God, Creator and Lord of heaven and 
earth, Almighty, Eternal, Immense, In- 
comprehensible, Infinite in intelli- 
gence, in will, and in all perfection, who 
as being one, sole, absolutely simple 
and immutable spiritual substance, is 
to be declared as really and essentially 
distinct from the world, of supreme 
beatitude in and from Himself, and in- 
effably exalted above all things which 
exist, or are conceivable, except Himself. 

“ This one only true God, of His own 
goodness and Almighty power, not for 
the increase or acquirement of His own 
happiness, but to manifest His perfec- 
tion by the blessings which He bestows 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 


on creatures, and with absolute freedom 
of counsel, created out of nothing, from 
the very beginning of time, both the 
spiritual and the corporeal creature, to 
wit, the angelical and the mundane, and 
afterward the human nature, as partak- 
ing in a sense of both, consisting of spirit 
and body.” 

But the canons of the Council relating 
to God as Creator of all things, are, if 
anything, stronger and more explicit 
than what precedes. 

They are as follows : 

“ 1. If anyone shall deny one true 
God, Creator and Lord of things visible 
and invisible ; let him be anathema. 

“ 2. If anyone shall not be ashamed 
to affirm that, except matter, nothing 
exists ; let him be anathema. 

“ 3. If anyone shall say that the sub- 
stance and essence of God and of all 
things is one and the same ; let him be 
anathema. 

“4. If anyone shall say that infinite 
things, both corporeal and spiritual, or at 
least spiritual, have emanated from the 
Divine substance ; or that the Divine Es- 
sence by the manifestation and evolution 
of Itself becomes all things ; or lastly, 
that God is universal or indefinite being, 
which by determining itself constitutes 
the universality of things, distinct ac- 


60 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 

cording to genera, species and individ- 
uals ; let him be anathema. 

“5. If anyone confess not that the 
world and all things which are contained 
in it, both spiritual and material, have 
been, in their whole substance, pro- 
duced by God out of nothing ; or shall 
say that God created, not by His will 
free from all necessity, but by a neces- 
sity equal to the necessity whereby He 
loves Himself ; or shall deny that the 
world was made for the glory of God ; 
let him be anathema.” 

We have here in a nutshell the Catho- 
lic doctrine of creation, as well as an 
authoritative pronouncement, which can- 
not be mistaken, respecting the atti- 
tude of the Church towards the Atheism, 
Materialism and Pantheism which have 
infected so many minds in our time, and 
exerted such a blighting influence on 
contemporary science. 

Meaning of the Word “Nature.” 

Knowing, now, in what sense we may 
interpret the word “ creation,” in what 
sense it must be understood according 
to Catholic teaching, we next proceed 
to the discussion of the word “ nature,” 
about which so much crass ignorance 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 61 

prevails, even among those who employ 
it most frequently, and whom it be- 
hooves to have clear ideas as to its 
import. 

“Nature” is frequently employed to 
designate “the material and spiritual 
universe as distinguished from the Cre- 
ator; ” to indicate the “ world of sub- 
stance whose laws are cause and effect;” 
or to signalize “the aggregate of the 
powers and properties of all things.” 
It is used to signify “ the forces or proc- 
esses of the material world, conceived 
as an agency intermediate between the 
Creator and the world, producing all 
organisms, and preserving the regular 
order of things.” In this sense it is 
often personified and made to embody 
the old gnostic notion of a demiurge, 
or an archon; a subordinate, creative 
deity who evolved from chaos the cor- 
poreal and animated world, but was 
inferior to the infinite God, the Creator 
of the world of spirits. It is made to 
refer to the “ original, wild, undomesti- 
cated condition of an animal or a 
plant,” or to “the primitive condi- 
tion of man antecedent to institutions, 


62 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


especially to political institutions,” as 
when for instance, we speak of animals, 
and plants being found, or men living in 
a state of nature. It likewise distin- 
guishes that which is conformed to 
truth and reality “from that which is 
forced, artificial, conventional, or remote 
from actual experience.” 

These are only a few of the many 
meanings of the word “ nature,” and 
yet they are quite sufficient to show us 
how important it is that we should al- 
ways be on our guard lest the term, so 
often ambiguous and so easily misap- 
plied, lead us into grave mistakes, if 
not dangerous errors. In works on 
natural and physical science, where the 
word “nature” is of such frequent oc- 
currence, and where it possesses such 
diverse meanings, having often different 
significations in a single paragraph, 
there is a special danger of misconcep- 
tion. Here, unless particular attention 
be given to the changed meanings of 
the term, it becomes a cloak for the 
most specious fallacies, and a prolific 
source of the most extravagant paral- 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 63 

Any one of the diverse meanings of 
the word “ nature,” as just given, is 
liable to be misconstrued by the un- 
wary. But the chief source of mischief 
with incautious readers arises from the 
habit scientific writers have, of indis- 
criminately personifying nature on all 
occasions; of speaking of it as if it were 
a single and distinct entity, producing 
all the various phenomena of the visible 
universe, and of referring to it as one 
of the causes that “ fabricate this cor- 
poreal and sensible world;” as a kind of 
an independent deity “which, being full 
of reasons and powers, orders and pre- 
sides over all mundane affairs.” 

When poets personify nature there is 
no danger of misconception. In their 
case the figurative use of the term is 
allowed and expected. Thus, when 
Bryant tells us that nature speaks “ a 
various language,” or when he bids us — 

“ Go forth under the open sky, and list 

To nature’s teachings ; ” 

or when Longfellow declares that — - 

“ No tears 

Dim the sweet look that nature wears,” 
we understand at once that “ nature ” is 
but a poetical fiction; and that the term 


64 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

is to be interpreted in a metaphorical 
and not in a literal sense. 

With naturalists, however, and phi- 
losophers, who are supposed to employ 
a more exact terminology, such a figura- 
tive use of language cannot fail, with 
the generality of readers, to be both 
misleading and mischievous. 

Darwin, and writers of his school, are 
continually telling us of the useful va- 
riety of animals and plants given to 
man “ by the hand of nature , ” and re- 
counting how “ nature selects only 
for the good of the being which she 
tends, ” how “ every selected character 
is fully exercised by her,” and how 
“ natural selection entails divergence of 
character and extinction of less im- 
proved forms.” Huxley loves to dilate 
on how “ nature supplied the club- 
mosses which made coal,” how she in- 
vests carbonic acid, water, and am- 
monia “ in new forms of life, feeding 
with them the plants that now live.” 
He assures us that “thrifty nature , 
surely no prodigal! but the most nota- 
ble of housekeepers,” is “never in a 
hurry, and seems to have had always 


MISCONCEPTIONS OF THEORY. 65 

before her eyes the adage, ‘ Keep a 
thing long enough, and you will find a 
use for it; ’ ” that “it was only the other 
day, so to speak, that she turned a new 
creature out of her workshop, who, by 
degrees, acquired sufficient wits to 
make a fire.” 


Nature and God. 

Now, there is no doubt but that all 
these quotations can be understood in an 
orthodox sense, but the fact, neverthe- 
less, remains, that they are not always 
so construed, and for the simple reason 
that both the writers from whom these 
citations are made, are avowed agnos- 
tics. So far as Huxley and Darwin are 
concerned, there may be a personal 
God, the Creator of the universe; but, 
they will have it, there is no evidence 
of the existence of such a Being. On 
the contrary, according to their theory, 
there is nothing but matter and motion, 
and if they do not, like King Lear, say: 
“ Thou, nature, art my goddess,” their 
teachings tend to incline others to the 
belief that there does really exist an 
entity subordinate to God, if not inde- 
S. D.— 5 


66 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

pendent of Him, that produces all ex- 
isting phenomena, not only in the world 
of matter, but also in the world of spirit. 

It is, then, against this constant mis- 
use of the word “ nature,” and espe- 
cially against the many false theories 
which are based on the misapprehension 
of its true significance, that it behooves 
us to be constantly on our guard. Er- 
rors of the most dangerous character 
creep in under the cover of ambiguous 
phraseology, and the poison of false 
doctrine is unconsciously imbibed, even 
by the most cautious. We may, if we 
will, personify nature, but, if we do so, 
let it not be forgotten that nature, with 
all her powers and processes, is but a 
creature of Omnipotence; that far from 
being merely an inward, self-organizing, 
plastic life in matter, independent of 
God, as was asserted by the hylozoist, 
Strato of Lampsacus, nature, as good 
old Chaucer phrases it, is but “ the 
vicar of the Almightie Lord.” 

Having explained the meaning of the 
words “ creation ” and “ nature,” we are 
now prepared to consider the subject of 
Evolution in relation to the teachings of 


misconceptions op theory. 


67 


faith. Here, however, we must again 
distinguish and explain. There are evo- 
lutionists, and evolutionists. There are 
evolutionists who give us in a new guise 
the old errors of Atheism, Materialism, 
and Pantheism; there are others who as- 
sert that our knowledge is confined to 
the phenomenal world, and that, conse- 
quently, we can know nothing about the 
absolute and the unconditioned; and 
there are others still, who contend that 
Evolution is not inconsistent with The- 
ism, and maintain that we can hold all 
the cardinal principles of Evolution 
without sacrificing a single jot or tittle 
of Dogma or revelation. 

For the sake of simplicity, we shall 
designate these three classes of evo- 
lutionists as: 1, monists; 2, agnostics; 
and 3, theists. Their doctrines are clearly 
differentiated, and naturally distinguish 
three schools of contemporary thought, 
known respectively as: 1, Monism; 2, 
Agnosticism; and 3, Theism. This is the 
most convenient and comprehensive 
grouping we can give, of the tenets of 
the leading representatives of modern 
science and philosophy, and, at the same 


68 science and doctrine. 

time, the most logical and satisfactory. 
In order to secure as great exactness, 
and make my exposition as concrete and 
tangible as possible, I shall, when feas- 
ible, allow the chief exponents of Mon- 
ism, Agnosticism, and Theism, to speak 
for themselves, and to present their 
views in their own words. This will in- 
sure not only greater accuraoy, but will 
also be fairer, and more in keeping with 
the plan I have followed in the preced- 
ing pages. 


CHAPTER III. 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 


Haeckel and Monism. 

jp^lSTORICALLY considered, Mon- 
ism, as a system of philosophy, is 
as old as speculative thought. It has, 
however, had various and even contra- 
dictory meanings. Etymologically, it 
indicates a system of thought, which re- 
fers all phenomena of the spiritual and 
physical w T orlds to a single principle. 
We have, accordingly, idealistic Monism, 
which makes matter and all its phenom- 
ena but modifications of mind; material- 
istic Monism, which resolves everything 
into matter; and, finally, the system of 
those who conceive of a substance that 
is neither mind nor matter, but is the 
underlying principle or substantial 
ground of both. In each and all of its 
forms, Monism is opposed to the phil- 
osophical Dualism which recognizes two 
principles — matter and spirit. 


70 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

The Monism, however, with which we 
have to deal here, is not the idealism of 
Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, Hegel or 
Schopenhauer, nor the atheistic Material- 
ism of D’Holbach and La Mettrie, which 
was but a modified form of Epicurean- 
ism, but rather a later development of 
these errors. An outgrowth of recent 
speculations in the natural and physical 
sciences, its origin is to be traced to 
certain hypotheses connected with some 
of the manifold modern theories of 
Evolution. 

The universally-acknowledged pro- 
tagonist of contemporary Monism is 
Ernst Haeckel, professor of biology in 
the University of Jena. He is often 
called “ the German Darwin,” and is re- 
garded, with Darwin and Wallace, as 
one of the founders of the theory of 
organic Evolution. From the first ap- 
pearance of Darwin’s “ Origin of 
Species,” he has been a strong and 
persistent advocate of the development 
theory, and did more than anyone else 
to popularize it in Germany and 
throughout the continent of Europe. 
He has, however, gone much further 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 71 

than the English naturalist, in his induc- 
tions from the premises supplied by the 
originator of the theory of natural se- 
lection. He draws conclusions from 
Darwinism at which many of its advo- 
cates stand aghast, and which, if carried 
out in practice, would not only subvert 
religion and morality, but would sap 
the very foundations of civilized society. 
Anti-monists, of course, contend that 
Hasckel’s conclusions are not valid, 
and that there is nothing either in 
Darwinism, or Evolution, when prop- 
erly understood, which warrants the 
dread inductions which have been 
drawn from them by the Jena nat- 
uralist. 

To understand the nature of Haeckel’s 
doctrines, and to appreciate the secret 
of his influence, we must consider him 
in a three -fold capacity — as a scientist, 
as a philosopher, and as the hierophant 
of a new form of religion, “ the religion 
of the future.” 

Haeckel as a Scientist. 

As a scientist, especially as a biolo- 
gist, he deservedly occupies a high 


72 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


place. Of unquestioned ability, of un- 
tiring industry, and of remarkable talent 
for original research, he is distinguished 
also for a certain intrepidity and asser- 
tiveness in promulgating his views, 
which have given him, not only a rep- 
utation, but a notoriety which is world- 
wide. His best work, probably, has 
been done in connection with his in- 
vestigations of some of the lower forms 
of life, especially the protista, the rad- 
iolaria, and the calcareous sponges. His 
researches in this direction would alone 
have been sufficient to make him famous 
in the world of science. But concern- 
ing these researches the general public 
knows little or nothing. The works of 
Hseckel which have made his name 
familiar the world over, are his popular 
expositions of evolutionary doctrines, 
viz., his “ Natiirliche Schbpfungsges- 
chichte,” or “Natural History of Crea- 
tion,” and “ Anthropogenie,” or “ Evo- 
lution of Man.” In these works, his 
chief endeavor is to present the theory 
of Evolution in a popular form, and to 
give the evidences on which it is 
founded. 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 


73 


Haeckel’s Nature Philosophy. 

But he does more than this. Not 
satisfied with being an expounder of the 
truths of science, he promulgates views 
on philosophy and religion which are as 
radical as they are irrational. He ap- 
pears not only as a professor of biology, 
but poses as the founder of a new school 
of philosophy, and as the high-priest of 
a new system of religion. He commits 
the error into which so many have 
fallen, of confounding the methods of 
metaphysics with those of experimental 
science, and of mistaking a priori rea- 
soning for strict inductive proof. 

The name which Haeckel gives his 
nature-philosophy, as he loves to call it, 
is, as already stated, Monism. The 
word “ Monism ” is often attributed to 
the Jena professor, but erroneously, as 
it was coined by Wolf long before. 
Haeckel has, however, given it a new 
meaning, and the one which is now 
generally understood when Monism is 
in question. He has, as he tells us, 
chosen this term so as to eliminate the 
errors attaching to Theism, Spiritualism, 
and Materialism, as well as to the 


74 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

Positivism of Comte, the Synthetism of 
Spencer, the Cosmism of Fiske, and 
other like evolutionary systems of phi- 
losophy. But here I shall let Haeckel 
speak for himself. 

In his “Evolution of Man,” he declares : 

“ This mechanical or monistic phi- 
losophy asserts that everywhere the 
phenomena of human life, as well as 
those of external nature, are under the 
control of fixed and unalterable laws ; 
that there is everywhere a necessary 
causal connection between phenomena, 
and that, accordingly, the whole know- 
able universe forms one undivided 
whole, a 4 monon.’ It further asserts 
that all phenomena are produced by 
mechanical causes, causae efficientes , not 
by prearranged, purposive causes, causae 
finales. Hence, there is no such thing 
as 4 free-will ’ in the usual sense. On 
the contrary, in the light of this monis- 
tic conception of nature, even those 
phenomena which we have been ac- 
customed to regard as most free and in- 
dependent, the expressions of the human 
will, appear as subject to fixed laws as 
any other natural phenomenon. Indeed, 
each unprejudiced and searching test 
applied to the action of our free will, 
shows that the latter is never really free, 
but is always determined by previous 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 


75 


causal conditions, which are eventually 
referable either to heredity or to adapta- 
tion. Accordingly, we cannot assent to 
the popular distinction between nature 
and spirit. Spirit exists everywhere in 
nature, and we know of no spirit out- 
side of nature.” 

Elsewhere, he tells us : 

“Unitary philosophy, or Monism, is 
neither extremely materialistic, nor ex- 
tremely spiritualistic, but resembles 
rather a union and combination of these 
opposed principles, in that it conceives 
all nature as one whole, and nowhere 
recognizes any but mechanical causes. 
Binary philosophy, on the other hand, 
or Dualism, regards nature and spirit, 
matter and force, inorganic and organic 
nature, as distinct and independent exis- 
tences.” 

Again, he assures us regarding the 
theory of development of Darwin that : 

“ If carried out logically, it must lead 
us to the monistic, or mechanical, causal 
conception of the universe. In opposi- 
tion to the dualistic, or teleological con- 
ception of nature, our theory considers 
organic as well as inorganic bodies, to be 
the necessary products of natural forces. 
It does not see in every species of ani- 
mal and plant the embodied thought of 
a personal Creator, but the expression, 


76 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 


for the time being, of a necessarily 
active cause, that is, of a mechanical 
cause, causa efficiens. Where teleo- 
logical Dualism seeks the thoughts of a 
capricious Creator in the miracles of 
creation, causal Monism finds in the 
process of development the necessary 
effects of eternal, immutable laws of 
nature.” 


Five Propositions of Haeckel. 

These quotations would seem to be 
sufficiently explicit, but Haeckel, not 
satisfied with such general statements, 
has been pleased to lay down five theses, 
respecting the theory of Evolution, 
which admit neither doubt nor ambigu- 
ity. They are worded as follows: 

1. “The general doctrine [of Evolu- 
tion] appears to be already unassailably 
founded. 

2. “ Thereby every supernatural crea- 
tion is completely excluded. 

3. “ Transformism and the theory of 
descent are inseparable constituent 
parts of the doctrine of Evolution. 

4. “The necessary consequence of 
this last conclusion is the descent of 
man from a series of vertebrates. 

5. “The belief in cp ‘immortal soul,’ 
and in ‘ a personal God ’ are therewith — 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 77 

i. e., with the four preceding state- 
ments — completely ununitable [yollig 

unvereinbar ] . ” 

Such, then, in brief compass, is Mon- 
ism as expounded by its latest and most 
applauded doctor and prophet. Such 
is Haeckelism, about which so much is 
said, but concerning which there is so 
little accurate knowledge. As is mani- 
fest from the above five propositions, it 
is but a neologistic formulation of old 
errors; a recrudescence, in modern sci- 
entific terminology, of the teachings of 
the Ionian and Greek materialistic 
schools ; a rechauffe of the well-known 
atomic theory of Leucippus and Democ- 
ritus of Abdera; a mixtum compositum 
of science, philosophy and theology; an 
olla podrida compounded of the most 
glaring errors and absurdities of Athe- 
ism, Materialism and Pantheism, ancient 
and modern. 

God and the Soul. 

God, according to Haeckel, is but a 
useless hypothesis. A personal “Creator 
is only an idealized organism, endowed 
with human attributes; a gross anthro- 
pomorphic conception, corresponding 


78 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

with a low animal stage of develop- 
ment of the human organism.” Haeck- 
el’s idea of God, an idea which, he 
assures us, “ belongs to the future,” 
is the idea which was expressed by 
Giordano Bruno when he asserted that: 
“A spirit exists in all things, and no 
body is so small but contains a part of 
the Divine substance within itself, by 
which it is animated.” In the words of 
one of Haeckel’s school, the true God is 
the totality of the correlated universe, 
the Divine reality, and there is, there- 
fore, “no possible room for an extra- 
mundane God, a ghost, or a spook, 
anyway or anywhere.” 

The atom, eternal and uncreated, is 
the sole God of the monist. Haeckel’s 
atom, however, is not the atom of the 
chemist — an infinitesimally small par- 
ticle of inorganic matter, the smallest 
constituent part of a molecule. It is 
far more. It is a living thing, endowed 
not only with life but also possessed of 
a soul. And this is no mere hypothesis 
with him. It is, he will have it, a 
demonstrated doctrine, an established 
fact. “An atom soul,” “a molecule 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 79 

soul,” “ a carbon soul,” are among the 
first corollaries of Monism, which, one of 
its advocates tells us, is now “ irrefra- 
gable, invincible, inexpugnable.” 

Organic and Inorganic Matter. 

There is, in Haeckers estimation, no 
essential difference between inorganic 
and organic matter ; no impassable chasm 
between brute and animated substance. 
All vital phenomena, especially the fun- 
damental phenomena of nutrition and 
propagation, are but physico-chemical 
processes, identical in kind with, al- 
though differing in degree from, those 
which obtain in the formation of crystals 
and ordinary chemical compounds. 
Like D’Holbach, he identifies mental 
operations with physical movements ; 
and, like Robinet, he attributes the 
moral sense to the action of special 
nerve-fibres. His Weltseele is not like 
that of Schelling, a spiritual principle 
or intelligence, but a blind unconscious 
force which always accompanies, and 
is inseparably connected with, matter. 

According to his views, sensation is a 
product of matter in movement, and 


80 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 


consciousness is but a summation of the 
rudimentary feeling of ultimate sentient 
atoms. The genesis of mind is thus en- 
tirely a mechanical process, and the con- 
ceptions of genius are but the result of 
the clash of atoms and the impact of 
molecules. Intellectual work is the 
correlative of certain brain- waves; thrills 
of gratitude, and love of friends and 
country, are mere oscillations of infinites- 
imal particles of brute matter. Pleasure 
and pain, joy and sorrow, are the direct 
product of vibratory motion, and the 
difference in the nature of these emo- 
tions arises solely from the difference 
in the character of the generating 
shakes and quivers. Like Cabanis, 
Haeckel makes thought a secretion of 
the brain, and holds, with Vogt, that 
the brain secretes thought as the liver 
secretes bile. With Moleschott, he 
would assert that thought is dependent 
on phosphorus, and with Buchner he 
would declare it to be a product of nerv- 
ous electricity. In the words of Caro, 
he teaches that: “ In matter, resides the 
principle of movement; in movement, is 
the reason of life; in life, is the reason of 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 


81 


thought.” Hence, in returning to the 
first term of the series, we observe that 
thought and life are only forms of move- 
ment, which is the original inherent 
property of eternal matter. 

With Hugo, Haeckel would exclaim: 

“ Learn that everything knows its law, its end 
its way ; . . . 

That everything in creation has consciousness. 

Winds, waves, flames, 

Trees, reeds, rocks, all are alive! All have 
souls . . . 

Compassionate the prisoner, but compassionate 
the bolt; 

Compassionate the chain, in dark, unhealthy 
prisons ; 

The axe and the block are two doleful beings, 

The axe suffers as much as the body, the block 
as much as the head.” 

The Religion of the Future. 

Such, in brief outline, are the leading 
conclusions of Haeckel’s teachings in 
science and philosophy. What, now, are 
his views on religion? For his friends 
and disciples assert that he is not only a 
great scientist, and a great philosopher, 
but that he is also to be saluted as the 
prophet and high-priest of the religion 
of science, which means, we are assured, 
the religion of the future. According 
to a recent exponent of Haeckelism : 

S. D.— 6 


82 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


“We find the religious history of 
our race to consist of a gradual Evolu- 
tion of its leading peoples from a broad 
base of general Animism and Fetichism, 
thence to astrology, thence to Polythe- 
ism, thence to Monotheism, and thence to 
Scientism, expressed chiefly to us in the 
Pantheism of Goethe, the Positivism of 
Comte, the Synthetism of Spencer, the 
Cosmism of Fiske, and finally by the 
Monism of Haeckel.” 

His new form of religion, we are told, 
“rises above all religions as the culmina- 
tion of all. If anything can be, it is, 
the universal faith,” and this because 
“ it is based upon verified science.” 

Truth to tell, however, Haeckel’s own 
views concerning religion are as crude 
and as extravagant as many of his ex- 
pressed opinions respecting philosophy 
and science. The monistic religion of 
nature, he informs us, “ we should regard 
as the veritable religion of the future.” 

“ It is not,” he continues, “ as are all 
the religions of the churches, in contra- 
diction, but in harmony with a rational 
knowledge of nature. While the latter 
have no other source than illusions and 
superstitions, the former reposes on truth 
and science. Simple, natural religion, 
based on a perfect knowledge of nature 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 


83 


and its inexhaustible treasure of revela- 
tions, will, in the future, impress on 
Evolution a seal of nobility, which the 
religious dogmas of divers people have 
been incapable of giving it. For these 
dogmas rest on a blind faith in obscure 
mysteries, and in mythical revelations 
formulated by priestly castes. Our 
epoch, which shall have had the glory of 
achieving the most brilliant result of 
human research, the doctrine of Evolu- 
tion, will be celebrated in coming ages 
as having inaugurated a new and fec- 
und era for the progress of humanity; 
an era characterized by the triumph of 
freedom of investigation over the dom- 
ination of authority, through the noble 
and puissant influence of monistic 
philosophy.” 

This brief extract from Haeckel’s 
inept statements about religion, concern- 
ing which, it is manifest, he is crassly 
ignorant, will relieve us from the neces- 
sity of following further this trumpeted 
reformer of religion and omniscient seer 
of Monism. It would be difficult to 
collect together, in the same space, a 
greater number of misstatements of 
fact, more glaring absurdities, or more 
preposterous propositions, than those 
contained in the foregoing quotation 


84 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


from one of his best-known and most 
popular works. I shall not attempt 
categorically to refute his errors of his- 
tory and philosophy, of science and the- 
ology, as this is beyond the scope of the 
present work. Neither shall I waste 
time in indicating wherein he has put 
himself, especially in matters of theol- 
ogy and religion, against the unanimous 
teaching of the saints and sages of all 
time. A mere presentation of his 
errors, in a clear light and in bold 
relief, is a sufficient, if not the best refu- 
tation for all reasonable men. Haeckel’s 
vagaries but emphasize once more a fact 
which has often been signalized —the 
danger incurred by specialists, particu- 
larly by mere physicists and biologists, 
when they attempt to discuss matters of 
which they are not only ignorant, but 
which are entirely foreign to their 
ordinary trend of thought, and when 
they pass the frontiers with which they 
may be familiar, and, entering upon a do- 
main of knowledge with which they are 
entirely unacquainted, seek the discus- 
sion of topics for which both their temper 
and education totally disqualify them. 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION . 


85 


Such a congeries of errors, scientific, 
philosophic and theologic, error person- 
ified, as it were, as that which we have 
just been contemplating, forcibly re- 
minds one of the words of the Mantuan 
bard when he describes the giant Poly- 
phemus, whose solitary orb was burnt 
out by Ulysses, 

“ Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui 
lumen ademptum.’ , i 

But if Haeckel is the accomplished 
biologist he is reputed to be, if he is one 
of the leading representatives of con- 
temporary science, and even his enemies 
will not deny that he is all this, how 
comes it, it will be asked, that he has 
fallen into so many errors and that he 
has so many enthusiastic followers? 

F or those who are familiar with the life- 
work of the J ena professor, and know how 
bindly the multitude follow one who is 
looked upon as an authority in science, 
how prone they are to hero worship, there 
will be no difficulty in answering those 
questions and in reconciling what 
are, at least, apparent contradictions. 

1 “A frightful, misshapen, huge monster de- 
prived of sight.” 


86 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Haeckel’s Limitations. 

Haeckel, no one questions it, lias 
achieved deserved eminence in his 
chosen field of work. But Haeckel is a 
specialist, an ardent specialist, and his 
limitations are very strongly marked. 
As a student of the lower forms of life, 
to which he has devoted the greater por- 
tion of his time, he has probably no 
superior, and but few peers. But the 
very ardor w T ith which he has cultivated 
science, and forced everything to cor- 
roborate a pet theory, has made him 
one-sided and circumscribed in his 
views of the cosmos as a whole, so as 
practically to incapacitate him for the 
discussion of general questions of 
science and philosophy, and much more 
those of theology. Like all specialists, 
he suffers from intellectual myopia, and 
it is almost inevitable that such should 
be the case. He examines everything 
as he would a microbe or a speck of 
protoplasm, under the objective of his 
microscope. He applies the methods of 
induction to questions of metaphysics, 
and confounds the principles of 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 


87 


metaphysics with the data of experi- 
mental science. The result, as might be 
anticipated, is to “make confusion worse 
confounded.” For such a one, the only 
cure is a broader knowledge and a rigid 
and systematic drill in the fundamental 
rules of dialectics. V erily, for a special- 
ist afflicted as Haeckel is, and he is but 
a type of the majority of specialists, it 
behooves him to purge— 

“ With euphrasy and rue 

The visual nerve, for he hath much to see.” 

But is this the sole explanation of the 
manifold errors into which the German 
naturalist has lapsed, and will this ac- 
count for his false declamation against 
religion, and his vehement denunciation 
of the Church, and of what she regards 
as most sacred? It is to be feared not. 
There is more than simple antipathy in 
his case. There is downright hatred. 
Only on this assumption can we ex- 
plain the use of the violent and blas- 
phemous language which is of such 
frequent occurrence in his more popular 
works. 

As to the reading public, their posi- 
tion is not difficult to understand. They 


88 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 

are, as it were, hypnotized, by what a Ger- 
man writer, Wiegand, aptly designates 
“the confused movement of the mind 
of our age,” and are, so far as 
their ability to think and judge for 
themselves goes, in a state of chronic 
catalepsy. They mistake assertions for 
proof, theories for science, and regard a 
conglomeration of neologisms, which 
explain nothing, as so much veritable 
knowledge. 

Verbal Jugglery. 

The secret of Haeckel’s prestige and 
influence with his readers, is not due 
simply to the extent of his information 
in his special line of study, nor to the 
astonishing mass and variety of facts 
which he discusses and compares, but 
rather to his manner of presenting facts, 
and to his adroitness in drawing the 
conclusions which suit him, whether 
such conclusions are warranted by the 
facts or not. With Haeckel, especially 
when treating of his favorite topics, 
Evolution and Monism, the wish is al- 
ways father to the thought, and he has 
a way of convincing his readers that he 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 89 

is right, even when they have reason to 
suspect, if they are not certain, that he 
is positively wrong. 

One of the chief reasons for Haeckel’s 
success as a theorist, is to be found in 
the fact that he is an expert in verbal 
jugglery, and a consummate master in 
the art of sophistry. Whether his use 
of sophism is intentional or not, is not 
for me to say. It does, however, seem 
almost incredible, that anyone endowed 
with ordinary reasoning powers could 
unconsciously fall into so great, and 
so frequent, errors of logic, as may 
be seen on almost every page of 
Haeckel’s evolutionary works. He 
possesses in an eminent degree, as has 
been well said of him, what a French 
prestidigitator declared to be the lead- 
ing principle of legerdemain, viz., “ the 
art of making things appear and dis- 
appear.” This is true. What Robert 
Houdin is among conjurers, that is 
Haeckel among what the Germans call 
the “ nature -philosophers ” of the present 
generation. 

The suppositions which he continu- 
ally makes, and the postulates which 


90 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


everywhere abound in his writings, show 
the looseness of his reasoning and the 
flimsiness of the structure which he has 
reared with such a flourish of trumpets, 
and to which he points with such evi- 
dent feelings of arrogant exultation. 
On almost every page of his “Evolution 
of Man,” and his “ History of Creation,” 
we find such phrases as “ there can be 
no doubt;” “which may safely be re- 
garded;” “as is now very generally 
acknowledged;” “we can with more or 
less certainty recognize;” “ it might be 
argued;” “a conception which seems 
quite allowable;” “we can, therefore, 
assume;” “ we may assert;” “ this justi- 
fies the conclusion;” and numberless 
others of similar import, which, like the 
paraphernalia of the magician, are de- 
signed to perplex and deceive. Atten- 
tion, however, to the matter under 
discussion, will always reveal the impos- 
ture in Haeckel’s case, and disclose the 
fact that his plausible statements are 
often nothing more than rhetorical 
artifices and tricks of dialectics; the 
reasonings of a special pleader who 
has before his mind but one aim, 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 91 

to give vraisemblance to an assump- 
tion that cannot be substantiated by 
fact. 

Understanding his methods of rea- 
soning, and the reckless manner in 
which he draws conclusions not con- 
tained in the premises, we need not be 
surprised to have Haeckel tell us, as he 
does in his fanciful pedigree of man, 
that we must “regard the amphioxus 
with special veneration, as that animal 
which alone, of all extant animals, can 
enable us to form an approximate con- 
ception of our earliest Silurian verte- 
brate ancestors.” Neither need we be 
surprised, because we know the man’s 
flippancy and cynicism, when he de- 
clares that “the amphioxus, skull-less, 
brainless and memberless as it is, de- 
serves all respect as being of our own 
flesh and blood,” and that this same 
brainless creature “ has better right to 
be an object of profoundest admiration 
and devoutest reverence, than any of 
that worthless rabble of so-called 4 saints,’ 
in whose honor our 4 civilized and en- 
lightened’ cultured nations erect tem- 
ples and decree processions.” 


92 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Type of a Class. 

But we need not follow further the 
Jena professor in his extravagant 
speculations and his wild diatribes 
against religion and Christian philoso- 
phy. He has already been given more at- 
tention than his work deserves. He is, 
however, a type of a class, and of quite 
a large class of scientific men who hold 
similar views, and who reason in a sim- 
ilar manner. The saying, ab uno disce 
omnes, is specially applicable here, be- 
cause to know one, and, especially, to 
know the leader, is to know all. The 
methods of all those belonging to the 
school of which Haeckel is such an out- 
spoken exponent are identical. They 
are all experts in the “ art of making 
things appear and disappear,” and if not 
as adroit as their master in the use of 
sophism, they are nevertheless, able to 
deceive the unwary and thus accom- 
plish untold mischief. 

Considering the nature of the teach- 
ings of Monism, it is not surprising 
that Haeckel and his school should have 
such a multitude of adherents and 


MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 


93 


sympathizers as they are known to 
have. 

“ In the troublous times in which we 
live,” observes the distinguished savant, 
the Marquis de Nadaillac, “ and in the 
midst of the confusion of ideas of which 
we are the sorrowful witnesses, human 
pride has attained proportions hitherto 
unknown. Science has become more 
dogmatic and more imperious than was 
ever theology. It counts, by thousands, 
adepts who speak with emphasis of 
modern science, without very often 
knowing the first word about it. But I 
am mistaken — they have been taught 
that modern science is the negation of 
creation, the negation of the Creator. 
God belongs to the old regime ; the 
idea of his justice weighs heavily on 
our enervated consciences. Accord- 
ingly, when a hypothesis, or a discov- 
ery, seems to contravene Christian 
beliefs, it is accepted without reflection 
and promulgated with inexplicable con 
fidence. It is in this fact, rather than 
in its scientific value, that we must, 
seek the raison d'etre of transforma- 
tion.” 

But probably no better explanation 
could be given of the confusion and 
perplexity which now reign supreme, 
especially among the masses, in matters 


94 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


of science, philosophy and theology, 
than is expressed by the old Epicurean 
poet when he affirms: 

“ Omnia enim stolidei magis admirantur 
amantque, 

Inversis quse sub verbis latitautia cernunt; 
Veraque constituunt, quse belle tangere possunt 
Aureis, et lepido quse sunt fucata sonore.” 1 

i “ For fools rather admire and delight in all 
things which they see hid under inversions and 
intricacies of words, and consider those assertions 
to be truths which have power to touch the ear 
agreeably, and which are disguised with pleasant- 
ness of sound.” Lucretius, “ De Rerum Natura,” 
Lib. 1,642-45. 


CHAPTER IV. 

AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. 
Nature and Scope of Agnosticism. 
MORE popular form of error than 



Monism, or scientific Atheism, and 


one which is more wide-spread and dev- 
astating in its effects, is the new- 
fangled system, if system it can be 
called, known as Agnosticism. To the 
superficial student it is not without 
color of plausibility, and by concealing 
the objectionable and repulsive features 
of Monism, it now counts more adher- 
ents, probably, than any other form of 
scientific error. 

Like Monism, Agnosticism is a system 
of thought which has allied itself with 
the theory of Evolution, from which, as 
ordinarily understood, it is inseparable. 
Like Monism, it is a mixtum compositum 


95 


96 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


of science, philosophy and theology, 
in which science and Evolution are 
predominant factors. And, like Mon- 
ism, too, it is a new name for an. old 
form of error. Unlike Monism, how- 
ever, Agnosticism affects to suspend 
judgment, where Monism makes a posi- 
tive assertion, or enters a point-blank 
denial. In many questions of funda- 
mental importance, Agnosticism is os- 
tensibly nothing more than simple 
doubt, or gentle skepticism, while Mon- 
ism is always arrogant, downright af- 
firmation, or negation. In its ultimate 
analysis, however, Agnosticism as well 
as Monism issues in a practical denial 
of a personal God, the Creator of the 
universe, and relegates Providence, the 
immortality of the soul, and the moral 
responsibility of man to a Divine Being, 
to the region of fiction. 

Again, Agnosticism, like Monism, is 
peculiarly and essentially the product 
of a combination and a succession of 
causes and conditions. As no one indi- 
vidual can be pointed to as the father 
of Monism, so no one person can be 
singled out as the founder of Agnosti- 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. 97 

cism. Both may have, and have had, 
their recognized exponents; both like a 
Greek drama, have their choragi and 
coryphei, but these exponents, these 
choragi and coryphei, are not spontane- 
ous growths. They do not, Minerva- 
like, leap suddenly into the intellectual 
arena, fully developed and armed cap- 
a-pie. On the contrary, they are the 
product of their environment, as af- 
fected by a series of antecedent factors 
and influences. They had their pred- 
ecessors and prototypes, those who 
planted the seeds which lay dormant 
until new conditions favored germina- 
tion and development. Then the fruit 
contained in the germ was made mani- 
fest, and the poison which had been so 
surreptitiously instilled, was discovered 
when it was too late to administer an 
antidote. 

The word > “ agnostic ” was invented 
by the late Prof. Huxley in 1869. He 
took it from St. Paul’s mention, in the 
Acts of the Apostles, of the altar erected 
by the Athenians “to the unknown 
God,” ayvdiffui) and, to the inventor’s 
great satisfaction, the term took, and 
s. d .— 7 


98 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


soon found a recognized position in 
the languages of all civilized nations. 

Huxley, however, although the coiner 
of the word Agnosticism, and one of 
its most zealous and popular exponents, 
is not its coryphaeus. This position is 
held by the philosopher of “ the un- 
knowable,” Herbert Spencer, who has 
done far more than any other one per- 
son to establish what might be called a 
school of agnostic philosophy. When 
it is remembered that Spencer is like- 
wise the philosopher of Evolution, “ our 
great philosopher,” as Darwin calls him, 
we can see what an intimate connec- 
tion there must be between Evolution, 
as a scientific theory, and Agnosticism 
as a system of philosophy. 

Huxley and Romanes. 

Huxley, indeed, has done more, 
probably, than anyone else to popular- 
ize Agnosticism, and by the majority of 
readers he is regarded as its chief expo- 
nent and defender. He, however, dis- 
claims anything like a creed, and declares 
that agnostics are precluded from having 
one by the very nature of their mental 


A GNOSTICISM AND E VOL VTION. 99 


status. He prefers to regard Agnosti- 
cism, not as a creed, but as “ a method, 
the essence of which lies in the rigor- 
ous application of a single principle.” 

“ Positively,” he informs us, “ the 
principle may be expressed: In mat- 
ters of the intellect, follow your reason 
as far as it will take you, without 
regard to any other consideration. And 
negatively: In matters of the intellect 
do not pretend that conclusions are cer- 
tain which are not demonstrated or 
demonstrable. That I take to be the 
agnostic faith, which, if a man keep 
whole and undefiled, he shall not be 
ashamed to look the universe in the 
face, whatever the future may have in 
store for him.” 

The profession of faith of G. J. 
Romanes, is more explicit, at least in so 
far as it refers to God, and gives us in 
a few words the views entertained by 
the two leading classes of agnostics re- 
garding the First Cause, or the Abso- 
lute or Unconditioned. 

“ By Agnosticism,” asserts Romanes, 
“I understand a theory of things which 
abstains from either affirming or deny- 
ing the existence of God. It thus repre- 
sents with regard to Theism a state of sus- 
pended judgment; and all it undertakes 


100 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

to affirm is, that upon existing evi- 
dence the being of God is unknown. 
But the term Agnosticism is frequently 
used in a widely different sense, as im- 
plying belief that the being of God is 
not merely now unknown, but must 
always remain unknown.” 

Docta Ignorantia. 

The agnostic creed, then, is a creed 
based on ignorance rather than on 
knowledge. We can know nothing that 
does not come within the range of 
sense ; nothing which we cannot observe 
with our miscroscopes, spectroscopes 
and telescopes, or examine with our 
scalpels, or test in our alembics and 
crucibles. Our knowledge is and must 
be, by the very nature of the case, 
limited to things material and phenom- 
enal. Every attempt to fathom the 
mysteries of the super-sensible or spirit- 
ual world, if there be such a world, or 
to trace a connection between noumenal 
cause or phenomenal effect, if there be 
such a connection, must, we are told, 
prove useless and abortive. There may 
or there may not be, a God ; we hope 
there is a God, but we have no warrant 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. 101 

for asserting His existence. We can- 
not affirm either that He is personal or 
impersonal, intelligent or unintelligent; 
we cannot saj whether He is mind or 
matter. We cannot, by searching, find 
Him out, and our every assertion re- 
garding Him is but a contradiction in 
terms. If there be a Supreme Being, a 
First Cause, an Absolute Existence, an 
Ultimate Power ; if, in a word, there be 
a God, He not only is now, but ever 
must be, unknown and unknowable, 
“There may be absolute truth, but 
if there is, it is out of our reach. It is 
possible that there may be a science of 
realities, of abstract being, of first prin- 
ciples and a priori truths, but it is up 
in the heavens, far above our heads, and 
we must be content to grovel amid 
things of earth — to build up as best we 
can our fragments of empirical knowl- 
edge, leaving all else to that future 
world, in which, in a clear light, if there is 
ever to be a clearer light for us, we shall 
know, if there is such a thing as knowl- 
edge, the nature and attributes of God, 
if there is a God, and if His nature can 
be known, and if His attributes are 
anything more than a fiction of theolo- 
gians .” 1 


l The Month , vol. XLV, p. 156. 


102 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


The Duke of Argyll in his interesting 
work, “The Unity of Nature” well ob- 
serves : 

“ This fundamental inconsistency in 
the agnostic philosophy, becomes all 
the more remarkable when we find, 
that the very men who tell us that 
we are not one with anything above 
us, are the same who insist that we are 
one with everything beneath us. What- 
ever there is in us or about us which is 
purely animal, we may see everywhere ; 
but whatever there is in us purely intel- 
lectual, or moral, we delude ourselves if 
we think we see it anywhere. There 
are abundant homologies between our 
bodies and the bodies of beasts ; but 
there are no homologies between our 
minds and any Mind which lives and 
manifests itself in nature. Our livers and 
our lungs, our vertebrae and our nervous 
systems, are identical in origin and in 
function with those of the living crea- 
tures around us ; but there is nothing in 
nature, or above it, which corresponds 
to our forethought or design or purpose, 
to our love of the good, or our admira- 
tion of the beautiful, to our indignation 
with the wicked, or to our pity for the 
suffering or the fallen. I venture to 
think that no system of philosophy that 
has ever been taught on earth, lies 
under such a weight of antecedent 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. 103 

improbability ; and this improbability 
increases in direct proportion to the 
success of science in tracing the unity 
of nature, and in showing step by step 
how its laws and their results can be 
brought into more direct relation with 
the mind and intellect of man.” 

Agnosticism as a Via Media. 

Agnosticism professes to be a kind of 
via media between Theism and Atheism. 
It does not deny the existence of God, 
but declares that a knowledge of Him 
is unattainable. Whether he has per- 
sonality or not ; whether He has in- 
telligence or not ; whether He is just, 
holy, omnipotent, omniscient or not ; 
whether He has a care for man and 
w r atches over him or not ; whether He 
has created man and the earth he in- 
habits or not — all these are questions 
which are simply insoluble; are matters 
which are, and must forever be, beyond 
the ken and apprehension of the human 
intellect. 

A very slight examination will suffice 
to convince anyone that such a via 
media cannot exist ; that, notwithstand- 
ing what its advocates may assert to the 


104 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


contrary, Agnosticism is but Atheism in 
disguise. More than this ; it is worse 
than Atheism. An atheist, although he 
may deny the existence of God, is never- 
theless open to discuss the subject. An 
agnostic, however, takes away all matter 
for disoussion by insisting that God, if 
there be a God, is unknowable, and 
being so, is beyond and above the reach 
of reason and consciousness. Far from 
being the Creator of heaven and earth 
and all things, as faith teaches, God, 
according to the agnostic, is but a 
creature of the imagination, a figment 
of theologians, and religion, even in its 
pure and noblest form, is but a develop- 
ment of fetichism or ghost- worship. 

Our present concern, however, is not 
so much with Agnosticism as a system 
of belief or unbelief, as with Agnos- 
ticism in relation to the theory of the 
origin and Evolution of the visible 
universe. 

Origin of the Universe. 

The great and perpetual crux for 
agnostics, as well as for atheists, is the 
existence of the world. For the theist, 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. 105 

the origin of the material universe offers 
no difficulty. He accepts as true the 
declaration of Genesis, that: “In the 
beginning God created heaven and 
earth,” and with the acceptance of this 
truth, all difficulty, based on the fact of 
creation, vanishes forthwith. But to the 
agnostic, as well as to the atheist, the 
query: Whence the world and the myr- 
iad forms of life which it contains? — is 
constantly recurring, and with ever-in- 
creasing persistency and importance. It 
is, as all must acknowledge, a funda- 
mental question, and no system of 
thought is worthy of the name of phi- 
losophy, that is not able to give an an- 
swer which the intellect will recognize 
as rational and conclusive. 

According to Herbert Spencer, there 
are but “ three verbally intelligent sup- 
positions,” respecting the origin of the 
universe. “We may,” he says, “ assert 
that it is self-existent; or that it is self- 
created; or that it is created by an ex- 
ternal agency. That it should be self- 
existent is inconceivable, because this ” 
implies the conception, which is an im- 
possibility, of infinite past time. To 


106 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


this let us add, that even were self-ex- 
istence conceivable, it would not in any 
sense be an explanation of the universe, 
nor make it in any degree more com- 
prehensible. Thus the atheistic theory 
is not only absolutely unthinkable, but 
even if it were thinkable, would not be 
a solution. 

“ The hypothesis of self-creation,” the 
English philosopher continues, “ which 
practically amounts to what is called 
Pantheism, is similarly incapable of be- 
ing represented in thought. Really to 
conceive self-creation, is to conceive 
potential existence passing into actual 
existence by some inherent necessity ; 
which we cannot do. And even were 
it true that potential existence is con- 
ceivable, we should still be no forwarder. 
For whence the potential existence? 
This would just as much require account- 
ing for existence, and just the same dif- 
ficulties would meet us.” 

According to Spencer, therefore, both 
the pantheistic and the atheistic hypothe- 
ses must be dismissed, as utterly inade- 
quate to explain the fact of the world’s 
actual existence. 

The third hypothesis, and the one 
generally received, is known as the the- 


A GNOSTICISM AND E VOL UTION. \ 07 

istic hypothesis; creation by an external 
agency. But, still to quote Spencer : 

“ The idea of a Great Artificer shap- 
ing the universe, somewhat after the 
manner in which a workman shapes a 
piece of furniture, does not help us to 
comprehend the real mystery; viz., the 
origin of the materials of which the uni- 
verse consists. . . . But even sup- 

posing that the genesis of the universe 
could really be represented in thought 
as the result of an external agency, the 
mystery would be as great as ever, for 
there would still arise the question: 
How came there to be an external agent, 
for we have seen that self-existence 
is rigorously inconceivable? Thus, im- 
possible as it is to think of the actual uni- 
verse as self-existing, we do but multiply 
impossibilities of thought by every at- 
tempt we make to explain its existence.” 

According to Spencer, then, the the- 
istic hypothesis of creation is as un- 
thinkable as the hypotheses of Atheism 
and Pantheism. The theistic, as well 
as the atheistic and the pantheistic views, 
he will have it, imply a contradiction in 
terms, and, such being the case, we 
must, perforce, resign ourselves to the 
acceptance of the agnostic position, 
which is one of ignorance and darkness. 


108 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Spencer's Unknowable. 

But, strive as he may, Spencer can- 
not think of the world around him with- 
out thinking of it as caused — and hence 
he is forced to think of a First Cause, 
infinite, absolute and unconditioned. 
And in spite of his assertion that God is 
and must be unknowable, he is continu- 
ally contradicting himself by assigning 
characteristics and attributes to that of 
which he avers we can know absolutely 
nothing. For He, of whom nothing 
can be known, of whom nothing can be 
declared, is, Spencer affirms, the First 
Cause of all, the Ultimate Reality, the 
Inscrutable Power, that which underlies 
all phenomena, that which accounts for 
all phenomena, that which transcends 
all phenomena, the Supreme Being, the 
Infinite, the Absolute, the All-Being, 
the Creative Power, the Infinite and 
Eternal Energy, by which all things are 
created and sustained; a mode of being as 
much transcending intelligence and will 
as these transcend mechanical motion. 

Sources of Agnosticism. 

One of the chief sources of the Ag- 
nosticism now so rampant, is to be 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. 109 

sought in the lamentable ignorance of 
the fundamental principles of true phi- 
losophy and theology everywhere mani- 
fest, and especially in the productions 
of our modern scientists and philoso- 
phers. And the only antidote for ag- 
nostic, as well as atheistic teaching, is 
that scholastic philosophy which con- 
temporary thinkers ignore, if they do 
not positively contemn; for it alone can 
clear up the fallacies which are con- 
stantly admitted in the name of philoso- 
phy, and which have done so much to 
confuse thought and to make sound 
ratiocination impossible. 

Another not unfrequent cause of error 
arises from a false psychology, from 
confounding or identifying a faculty — 
imagination — which is material, with a 
faculty — reason — which is immaterial. 
Mind is made a function of matter, and 
that which cannot be pictured to the 
imagination is regarded as impossible 
of apprehension by the intellect. That, 
therefore, which the imagination cannot 
admit, cannot be accepted by reason; 
that which is unimaginable is, ipso 
facto , unthinkable. Such is the suicidal 


110 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

skepticism of those who confuse the 
immaterial thought, which is above 
and beyond sense, with the material im- 
agination, which is always intimately 
connected with sense, and which, by its 
very nature, is incompetent to rise 
above the conditions and limitations of 
matter. 

Again, probably no two terms are 
more prolific of fallacy and confusion 
than the much-abused words time and 
space. 

Infinite Time. 

One of the gravest objections against 
the existence of God, from Spencer’s 
point of view, is that we cannot con- 
ceive of a self-existent being, because 
self-existence implies infinite past time, 
which is a contradiction in terms. We 
cannot conceive of God existing from 
all eternity, because eternity is but time 
multiplied to infinity, and we cannot 
conceive time multiplied to infinity. 

The difficulty here indicated arises 
from a misapprehension of the nature of 
time, and from an anthropomorphic view 
of God, which subjects Him to the condi- 
tions and limitations of His creatures. 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. m 

God has not existed through infinite 
time, as is supposed. He does not exist 
in time at all. He exists apart from 
time; and before time was, God was. 
Time implies change and succession; 
but in God there is neither change nor 
succession. As the measure of the 
existence of created things, it is some- 
thing relative; but in God all is abso- 
lute. Eternity is not, as the agnostic 
has it, time raised to an infinite power, 
no more than the attributes of God are 
human attributes raised to an infinite 
power. God has existed from all eter- 
nity, but He is, by His very nature, 
above time, and before time, and beyond 
time, even infinite time. To make God 
exist through infinite past time, because 
He has existed from all eternity, would 
be tantamount to imposing on Him the 
conditions of created things, and to de- 
grading Him as much as do the most 
extravagant of anthropomorphists. 

Infinite Space. 

And as God does not exist in time, so 
He does not exist in space. Infinite 
space, like infinite time, is a contradic- 
tion in terms. If there were nothing to 


112 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

be measured, if material objects could 
be annihilated, space would disappear. 
For space is not an independent entity, 
as agnostics suppose, not a kind of a 
huge box, which was created for the 
reception of material things, but the 
necessary and concomitant result of the 
creation of matter, of what is limited 
and capable of measurement. And as 
God is above and before and beyond 
time, so is He likewise above and before 
and beyond space. As time began only 
when God uttered His creative fiat , so 
space had no existence until the crea- 
tion of the material universe. Neither 
space nor time, therefore, can be used 
as a foundation on which to base an 
argument against creation, or the 
existence of a First Cause, for both 
space and time imply limitation, and 
God, the Absolute, is above and inde- 
pendent of all limitation. Agnostics, 
who protest so strongly against An- 
thropomorphism, are, therefore, them- 
selves anthropomorphists, when they at- 
tempt, as they do by their irrational 
theory, to tie down the Creator to the 
conditions of His creatures. 


A GNOSTICISM AND EVOL UTION. H 3 


Mysteries of Nature. 

I have said that one of the chief 
causes of Agnosticism is ignorance of 
Christian philosophy and theology. 
This is true. But there is also another 
reason. The mysteries of nature which 
everywhere confront us, and which baffle 
all attempts at their solution ; the im- 
possibility of lifting the veil which 
separates the visible from the invisible 
world, are other sources of skepticism, 
and contribute not a little to make 
Agnosticism plausible, and to give 
it the vogue which it now enjoys. 

“Hardly,” says the Wise Man, “do 
we guess aright at things that are upon 
earth ; and with labor do we find the 
things that are before us. But the 
things that are in Heaven, who shall 
search out?” 

The mysteries of the natural order, 
those which confront us on the threshold 
of the unseen, are great and often in- 
soluble ; but how much greater, how 
much more unfathomable, are those that 
envelop the world beyond the realm of 
sense, the world of spirit and soul, the 
s. D.— 8 


114 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

world of angelic and Divine intelli- 
gence ! 

The difficulties indicated are grave 
indeed, but skeptics are not the only 
ones who have given them thought or 
fully appreciated their magnitude. 
There is a Christian as well as a skep- 
tical Agnosticism, and all the difficulties 
suggested by the mysteries of the 
natural and supernatural orders, were 
long ago realized and taken into ac- 
count by Christian philosophy and 
Christian theology. They were before 
the minds of Origen and Clement of 
Alexandria; they occupied the brilliant 
intellects of St. Basil, St. John Chrysos- 
tom, St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. 
Augustine; they entered into the dis- 
putations of the Schoolmen, and have 
found a prominent place in the writings 
of their successors up to the present 
day. No, these difficulties have not 
been ignored; neither have they been 
underrated nor dismissed without re- 
ceiving the consideration their im- 
portance demands. Far from being 
new, as certain writers would have us 
believe; far from being the product of 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. H5 

the research of these latter days; far 
from being the result of those deep and 
critical investigations which have been 
conducted in every department of 
knowledge, sacred and profane, they 
are as old as the Church, as old even as 
speculative thought. 

Christian Agnosticism. 

Unlike the Agnosticism of skepticism, 
however, Christian Agnosticism is on 
firm ground, and, guided by the princi- 
ples of a sound philosophy, is able with 
unerring judgment to discriminate the 
true from the false, and to draw the line 
of demarcation between the knowable 
and the unknowable. Christian Agnos- 
ticism confesses aloud that God is in- 
comprehensible, that we can have no 
adequate idea of His perfections, but, 
unlike skeptical Agnosticism, it brushes 
aside the false and delusive hope, that 
in the distant future, when our faculties 
are more highly developed, when the 
work of Evolution is farther advanced 
than it now is, we may perhaps be able 
to comprehend the Divine nature, and 
have an adequate notion of the Divine 


116 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

perfections. Christian Agnosticism tells 
us that not even the blessed in Heaven, 
who see the whole of the Divine nature, 
can ever have, even after millions and 
billions of ages, a knowledge which 
shall be commensurate in depth with 
the Divine Object of their adoration and 
love. They shall see God in the clear 
light of the Beatific Vision, facie ad 
faciem , and shall know as they are 
known. Nothing shall be hidden from 
them. Their intelligence will be illu- 
mined by the light of God’s glory. 
The veil that now intervenes between 
the Creator and the creature will be re- 
moved, and the created intellect will be 
in the veritable presence of the Divine 
Essence. But even then, it will be im- 
possible to have an adequate or a com- 
prehensive knowledge of God. He 
will, as the Scholastics phrase it, be 
known totus sed non totaliter. The 
soul will always have new beauties un- 
discovered, fresh glories to arrest its 
enraptured gaze, and unfathomable 
abysses of love and wisdom to con- 
template, whose immensity will be as 
great after millions of aeons shall have 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. H7 

elapsed, as when it was ushered into the 
Divine Presence, when it caught the 
first glimpse of the glory of the Beatific 
Vision, and experienced the first thrills 
of ecstasy in the contemplation of the 
fathomless, limitless ocean of God’s in- 
finite perfections. The soul will know 
God, but its knowledge will always be 
limited by the fact that it is created, 
that it is finite, that it is human, that its 
capacity is narrowed and restricted by 
its very nature, and is, therefore, in- 
competent to fathom the depths, or 
comprehend the immensity, of the ocean 
of Divine Wisdom and Divine Love, 
to comprehend, in a word, that which 
is immeasurable, and infinite, and 
eternal. 

If, then, the blessed may drink for all 
eternity at the fountain of the Godhead, 
without exhausting or diminishing the 
infinitude of joy and love and knowl- 
edge which is there found, we should 
not be surprised, to encounter diffi- 
culties and mysteries, in the natural as 
well as in the supernatural order, which 
are above and beyond our weak and 
circumscribed intellects. We admit, 


118 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

and admit frankly, that there is much 
that we do not know, much that we can 
never comprehend. But our ignorance 
of many things does not make us skep- 
tics in all things beyond the range of 
sense and experiment. We may' not 
know God adequately, but we do know 
much about Him, aside from what He 
has been pleased to reveal regarding 
Himself. With St. Paul, we believe 
that “ the invisible things of God from 
the creation of the world are clearly 
seen, being understood by the things 
that are made: His eternal power also 
and divinity.” 

Of the essence of God we can know 
nothing. Even of matter we are igno- 
rant as to its essence. From the exist- 
ence of the world, we infer the existence 
of God; for our primary intuitions teach 
us that there can be no effect without a 
cause. The evidences of order and de- 
sign in the universe, prove the existence 
of a Creator who is intelligent, who has 
power and will, and who, therefore, is 
personal, and not the blind fate and im- 
personal energy and unknowable entity 
of the agnostic. 


AGNOSTICISM AND EVOLUTION. H9 


Gods of the Positivist and the Agnostic. 

The gods of the heathen were mani- 
fold and grotesque, but what shall we 
say of the objects which the positivist 
and agnostic propose for our worship 
and love? 

The Greeks and Romans gave Divine 
honors to demi-gods and heroes. Comte, 
one of the apostles of modern Agnos- 
ticism, affects to recoil before such gross 
idolatry; but is he more of a philosopher, 
or less of an idolator, when he proclaims 
that it is not man taken individually, or 
any particular man, but man taken col- 
lectively, man considered in the aggre- 
gate, that is to be regarded as the object 
of our cult? The Roman and the Athe- 
nian worshipped Apollo and Hercules, 
Jupiter and Venus; Comte says we must 
worship Humanity in its entirety. Hux- 
ley, however, dissents from this view, 
and tells us that it is not Humanity, but 
the Cosmos, the visible material universe, 
which should constitute the object of 
our highest veneration and religious 
emotion. Herbert Spencer is even more 
nebulous and mystical. His deity is 


120 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Unknowable Energy, “ impersonal, un- 
conscious, unthinking and unthinkable.” 
God is “the great enigma which he 
[man] knows cannot be solved,” and 
religion can at best be concerned only 
with “ a consciousness of a mystery which 
can never be fathomed.” According to 
Mr. Harrison, however — the brilliant 
critic of the views propounded by Hux- 
ley, the doughty combatant who has so 
frequently run full atilt against the 
champions of Agnosticism — Spencer’s 
Unknowable is “ an ever-present conun- 
drum to be everlastingly given up;” 
his Something, or All-Being, is a pure 
negation, “ an All-Nothingness, an x n and 
an Everlasting No.” Verily it is of such, 
“ vain in their thoughts and darkened 
in their foolish heart,” that the Apostle 
of the Gentiles speaks when he declares 
that they “ changed the truth of God 
into a lie; and worshipped and served 
the creature rather than the Creator.” 

But it is not my purpose to dilate 
on the teachings of Agnosticism. My 
sole object is to indicate briefly some 
of its more patent and fundamental 
errors. A detailed examination and 


A GNOSTICISM AND EVOL UTION. 121 

refutation of them does not come within 
the purview' of our subject. For such 
examination and refutation, the reader 
is referred to works which treat of these 
topics ex professo. It suffices for our 
present purpose to know the relation of 
Agnosticism to Evolution; to know that 
a particular phase of Evolution is so 
intimately connected with Agnosticism, 
that it cannot be disassociated from it, 
to realize that Agnosticism, and agnos- 
tic Evolution, are practically as synony- 
mous as are Atheistic Evolution and 
Monism. It is enough for us to appre- 
ciate the fact that Agnosticism and 
Monism are fundamentally erroneous, 
to understand that both monistic and 
agnostic Evolution are untenable and 
inconsistent with the teaching of The- 
ism and with the doctrines of Christian- 
ity; that they are illegitimate inductions 
from the known data of veritable science, 
and utterly at variance with the primary 
concepts of genuine philosophy. We 
need, consequently, consider them no 
further. Evolution, in the sense in 
which it is held by the Monist and 
Agnostic, is so obviously in positive 


122 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


contradiction to the leading tenets of 
Theism, that it may forthwith be dis- 
missed as not only untenable, but as 
unwarranted by fact and experiment, 
and negatived by the incontestable 
principles of sound metaphysics and 
Catholic Dogma. 


CHAPTER V. 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 

Evolution and Faith. 

[p^AVING eliminated from our dis- 
cussion the forms of Evolution 
held by the divers schools of monists 
and agnostics, there now remains but 
the third form, known as theistic Evo- 
lution. Can we, then, consistently with 
the certain deductions of science and 
philosophy, and in accordance with the 
positive dogmas of faith — can we as 
Christians, as Catholics, who accept 
without reserve all the teachings of the 
Church, give our assent to theistic Ev- 
olution ? This is a question of para- 
mount importance, one which is daily 
growing in interest, and one for an 
answer to which the reading public has 
long been clamoring. And with it 
must also be answered a certain number 
of cognate questions, of scarcely less 

123 


124 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

interest and importance than the main 
question of Evolution itself. 

I have elsewhere shown 1 that the 
principles of theistic Evolution — the 
Evolution, namely, which admits the 
existence of a God, and the develop- 
ment, under the action of His Provi- 
dence, of the universe and all it con- 
tains — were accepted and defended by 
some of the most eminent Doctors of 
the early Greek and Latin Churches. 
It was a brilliant luminary of the 
Oriental Church, St. Gregory of Nyssa, 
who first clearly conceived and formu- 
lated the nebular hypothesis, which was 
long centuries subsequently elaborated 
by Laplace, Herschel and Faye. The 
learned prelate found no difficulty in 
admitting the action of secondary 
causes, in the formation of the universe 
from the primal matter which the Al- 
mighty had directly created. Accord- 
ing to Gregory and his school, God 
created matter in a formless or nebu- 
lous condition, but impressed on this 
matter the power of developing into all 

i “ Bible, Science and Faith,” part I, chaps, in 
and iv. 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. \2h 

the various forms which it afterwards 
assumed. The universe and all it con- 
tains, the earth and all that inhabits it — 
plants, animals, man — were created by 
God, but they were created in different 
ways. The primitive material, the 
nebulous matter, from which all things 
were fashioned, was created by God 
directly, and immediately ; whereas, 
all the multitudinous creatures of the 
visible world, were produced by Him 
indirectly and mediately, that is, by 
the operation of secondary causes and 
what are commonly called the laws of 
nature. 

Teachings of St. Augustine. 

St. Augustine not only accepted the 
conclusions of his illustrious Greek pred- 
ecessor, but he went much further than 
the Bishop of Nyssa. He was, like- 
wise, much more explicit, especially in 
what concerned the development of the 
various forms of animal and vegetable 
life. According to the Doctor of Hip- 
po, God did not create the world as 
it now appears, but only the primordial 
matter of which it is composed. Not 
only the diverse forms of inorganic 


126 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

matter — rocks, minerals, crystals — were 
created by the operation of secondary 
causes, but plants and animals were 
also the products of such causes. For 
God, the saint insists, created the mani- 
fold forms of terrestrial life, not directly 
but in germ; potentially and causally — 
potentialiter atque causaliter. In com- 
menting on the words of Genesis: “Let 
the earth bring forth the green herb,” 
he declares that plants were created not 
directly and immediately, but causally 
and potentially, in fieri , in causa / that 
the earth received from God the power 
of producing herb and tree, producendi 
accepisse virtutem. 

In his great work on the Trinity, the 
illustrious Doctor tells us that: “The 
hidden seeds of all things that are born 
corporeally and visibly, are concealed 
in the corporeal elements of the world.” 
We are unable to see them with our 
eyes, “but we can conjecture their ex- 
istence from our reason.” They are 
quite different from “those seeds that 
are visible at once to our eyes, from 
fruits and living things.” It is indeed 
from such hidden and invisible seeds 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 127 

that “ The waters, at the bidding of the 
Creator, produced the first swimming 
creatures and fowl, and that the earth 
brought forth the first buds after their 
kind, and the first living creatures after 
their kind.” They lay dormant, as it 
were, until long aeons after the creation 
of matter, because “suitable combina- 
tions of circumstances were wanting, 
whereby they might be enabled to burst 
forth and complete their species.” 

“The world,” he avers, “is pregnant 
with the causes of things that are com- 
ing to the birth; which are not created 
in it, except from the highest essence, 
where nothing either springs up or dies, 
either begins to be or ceases.” But the 
Creator of these seeds, the Cause of 
these causes, Causa causarum , is at 
the same time the Creator of all things 
that exist. He carefully distinguishes 
“ God creating and forming within, 
from the works of the creature which are 
applied from without.” “ In the creation 
of visible things it is God,” he affirms, 
“that works from within, but the ex- 
terior operations,” that is, the opera- 
tions of creatures or those of divers 


128 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


physical forces, “are applied by Him 
to that nature of things wherein He 
creates all things.” 

“For,” the Saint continues, “it is one 
thing to make and administer the crea- 
ture from the innermost and highest turn- 
ing point of causation, which He alone 
does who is God, the Creator; but quite 
another thing to apply some operation 
from without, in proportion to the 
strength and faculties assigned to each 
by Him, that that which is created may 
come forth into being at this time or at 
that, or in this way or that way. For all 
things, in the way of origin and begin- 
ning, have already been created in a 
kind of texture of the elements, in 
quadam textura elementorum ; but they 
can come forth only when opportunity 
offers, acceptis opportunitatibus .” 

God, then, according to St. Augus- 
tine, created matter directly and im- 
mediately. On this primordial or ele- 
mentary matter He impressed certain 
causal reasons, causales rationes ; that 
is, He gave it certain powers, and im- 
posed on it certain laws, in virtue of 
which it evolved into all the myriad 
forms which we now behold. The saint 
does not tell us by what laws or 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 123 

processes the Creator acted. He makes 
no attempt to determine what are the fac- 
tors of organic development. He limits 
himself to a general statement of the 
fact of Evolution, of progress from the 
simple to the complex, from the homo- 
geneous to the heterogeneous, from 
simple primordial elements to the count- 
less, varied, complicated structures of 
animated nature. 

Has any modern philosopher stated 
more clearly the salient facts of organic 
Evolution? Has anyone insisted more 
strongly on the reign of law in nature, 
or discriminated more keenly between 
the operations of the Creator and those 
of the creature? Has anyone realized 
more fully the functions of a First 
Cause, as compared with those of causes 
which are but secondary or physical? 
If so, I am not aware of it. Modern 
scientists have, indeed, a far more de- 
tailed knowledge of the divers forms of 
terrestrial life than had the philosophical 
Bishop of Hippo; they have a more 
comprehensive view of nature than was 
possible in his day, but they have not, 
with all their knowledge and superior 
s. D.— 9 


130 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


advantages, been able to formulate the 
general theory of Evolution a whit more 
clearly, than we find it expressed in 
the writings of the Doctor of Grace, 
who wrote nearly fifteen centuries 
ago. 

Views of the Angelic Doctor. 

The Angelic Doctor takes up the 
teachings of St. Augustine and makes 
them his own. He discusses them ac- 
cording to the scholastic method, and 
with a lucidity and a comprehensiveness 
that leave nothing to be desired. He 
carefully distinguishes between creation 
proper, and the production or genera- 
tion of things from preexisting material ; 
between the operations of absolute 
Creative Energy, and those which may 
be performed by secondary causes. 
Indeed, so exhaustive and so complete 
is his treatment of the origin and Evo- 
lution of the material universe and all it 
contains; so clear and so conclusive his 
argumentation, that his successors have 
found but little to add to his brilliant 
propositions respecting the genesis of 
the world and its inhabitants. 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 


131 


The primordial Divine act of creation, 
according to St. Thomas, following St. 
Augustine, consisted in the creation, ex 
nihilo , of three classes of creatures; 
spiritual intelligences, the heavenly 
bodies and simple bodies, or elements. 
According to the physical theories 
of the time, the composition of the 
celestial bodies was supposed to be dif- 
ferent from that of the earth. They 
were supposed to be incapable of gen- 
eration or corruption ; 1 to be constituted 
of elementary matter, indeed, but mat- 
ter unlike that of sublunary bodies, in 

i The scholastic use of the words “ generation ” 
and “ corruption ” must carefully be distinguished 
from the ordinary meaning of these terms. “ In 
its widest sense,” as Father Harper tells, “ genera- 
tion includes all new production even by the crea- 
tive act. In a more restricted sense, it includes 
all transformations, accidental as well as substan- 
tial. In a still more restricted sense, substantial 
transformations only. Yet more specially, the 
natural production of living things; most spe- 
cially, the natural production of man.” Corrup- 
tion, as understood by the Schoolmen, means, not 
“ retrograde transformation, such as occurs, for 
instance, in the death of a living entity,” but “ the 
dissolution of a body by the expulsion of that sub- 
stantial form by which it had been previously 
actuated. In the order of nature, it is the invaria- 
ble accompaniment of generation.” Cf. “ Meta- 
physics of the School,” vol. II, glossary, and pp. 
273-279. 


132 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

that it is incorruptible. We now know 
that mediaeval philosophers were in 
error on this point. Spectrum analysis 
has demonstrated that all the celestial 
bodies have the same composition as 
our earth, and that the constitution of 
the material universe is identical 
throughout its vast expanse. Elimi- 
nating this error, which was one of 
physics, and not one of philosophy or 
theology, and one which in nowise im- 
pairs the teachings of the Angelic Doc- 
tor regarding creation, we have, accord- 
ing to St. Thomas, the creative act 
terminating in elementary matter and 
spiritual substance. 

But here we must clearly distinguish 
between elementary matter, properly 
so called — the elements of which St. 
Thomas speaks — and primal matter, 
materia prima , which was given such 
prominence in the philosophical works 
of the Schoolmen. According to Aris- 
totle, who follows Empedocles, there 
are four primitive elements, earth, air, 
fire and water; and from these, by suit- 
able combinations, all other material 
substances are derived. The Scholastics, 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 133 

in accepting the philosophy of the 
Stagirite, naturally adopted this theory 
of the four elements. Chemistry, how- 
ever, has long since exploded this theory, 
as spectrum analysis has disproved the 
mediaeval view regarding the compo- 
sition of the heavenly bodies. But 
whether there are four elements, as the 
Schoolmen imagined, or some sixty odd, 
as modern chemists maintain, or but one 
only, as some of the old Greek philoso- 
phers believed, and as certain men of 
science still contend, it is quite imma- 
terial so far as our present argument is 
concerned. What is necessary to bear 
in mind is, that the elementary matter 
of which the universe is composed, 
whether it be of one or of many kinds, 
was, in the beginning, created by God 
from nothing. For it is manifest that 
it was not the intention of the Angel of 
the Schools, to commit his followers to 
any mere physical theory respecting the 
number and nature of the elements, es- 
pecially when the ideas entertained re- 
garding these subjects were as vague 
and diverse as they are known to have 
been in his day. Neither he nor his 


134 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


contemporaries had any means of throw- 
ing light on the questions involved. 
Even now, after all the splendid tri- 
umphs which chemistry has witnessed 
since the epoch-making achievements 
of Lavoisier, we are still in ignorance 
as to the exact number of elements 
existing, and are yet debating whether 
all the so-called elements may not 
be so many allotropic conditions of 
one and the same kind of matter. 
But what the Angelic Doctor did wish 
to insist on, what he wished specially 
to bring home to his hearers, was the 
great dogmatic truth according to 
which God is the Creator of all things, 
material and immaterial, visible and 
invisible. 

Materia prima, however, as under- 
stood by the Scholastics, is quite dif- 
ferent from what we know as elementary 
matter. In all bodies subject to gen- 
eration and corruption, it is, they tell 
us, numerically one — una numero in 
omnibus. It is one and the same in all 
the components of the earth, and in all 
the constituent orbs of space. Of its 
very nature it is “ ungenerated, ungen- 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 


135 


erative, indivisible, incorruptible, inde- 
structible.” But this materia prima , 
although an entity, is not a complete 
substance. It cannot exist by itself, but 
must be actuated by some form. For it 
is form which determines matter and 
gives it being. An element, accord- 
ingly, is a composite entity, a composi- 
tum , constituted of matter — which is the 
subject, potentiality or inferior part of 
the composite — and form, which is the 
act or superior part. And although 
there is but one matter, there are many 
forms . 1 And it is because this one mat- 
ter is actuated by diverse forms, that we 
have the manifold elements which con- 
stitute the material universe. 

Seminales Rationes. 

But these elements, composed of mat- 
ter and form, required something more 
in order to be competent to enter into 
combinations and to give rise to higher 
and more complex substances. 

lFor an elaborate explanation of the words 
“matter” and “ form,’’ see chaps. II and III, vol. 
II, of Harper’s “ Metaphysics of the School.” 
Cf. also, $ 48, vol. I of Ueberweg’s “ History of 
Philosophy.” 


136 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


This something more, the Angelic 
Doctor designates seminal forces, or 
influences — seminales rationes. 

“ The powers lodged in matter,” he 
tells us, “ by which natural effects result, 
are called seminales rationes. The com- 
plete active powers in nature, with the 
corresponding passive powers — as heat 
and cold, the form of fire, the power of 
the sun, and the like— are called semi- 
nales rationes. They are called semi- 
nal, not by reason of any imperfection 
of entity that they may be supposed to 
have, like .the formative virtue in seed; 
but because on the individual things at 
first created, such powers were conferred 
by the operations of the six days, so that 
out of them, as though from certain 
seeds, natural entities might be pro- 
duced and multiplied.” 

The physical forces — heat, light, elec- 
tricity and magnetism — would, doubt- 
less, in modern scientific terminology, 
correspond to the seminales rationes of 
the Angelic Doctor, as they are efficient 
in producing changes in matter and in 
disposing it for that gradual Evolution 
which has obtained in the material 
universe. 

In the beginning, then, God created 
primordial matter, which was actuated 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 137 

by various substantial forms. With the 
elements thus created were associated 
certain seminal influences — certain 
physical forces, we now should say — 
and the various compounds, which sub- 
sequently resulted from the action of 
these forces on the diverse elements 
created, were the product of generation 
and not of creation. There was devel- 
opment, Evolution, under the action of 
second causes, from the simple elements 
to the highest inorganic and organic 
compounds; from the lowest kinds of 
brute matter to the highest bodily rep- 
resentatives of animated nature; but 
there was nothing requiring anew crea- 
tive action or extraordinary interven- 
tions, except, of course, the human soul. 

After this primordial creation, God 
continued and sustained His work by 
His Providence. Matter was then 
under the action of secondary causes, 
under what science calls the reign of 
law, and under the action of these sec- 
ondary causes, under the influence of 
forces and laws imposed on it by God 
in the beginning, it still remains, and 
shall remain, until time is no more. 


138 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Creation According to Scripture. 

This teaching is in perfect harmony 
with the declarations of the opening 
chapter of Genesis, which speaks first of 
the creation of matter, then of the pro- 
duction from matter of plants and ani- 
mals. It is consistent, too, with the 
teachings of science, which affirm that 
the material universe was once but a 
nebulous mass, which in the course of 
time condensed into solid bodies, the 
stars and planets, and which, after 
countless ages and by a gradual Evolu- 
tion under the action of natural laws, 
generated those myriad objects of pass- 
ing beauty and marvelous complexity 
which we now so much admire. 

Matter alone, insists St. Thomas, in 
speaking of the visible universe, was 
created, in the strict sense of the term, 
and in this he but follows the indica- 
tions of the Mosaic narrative of crea- 
tion, and St. Augustine’s interpretation 
of the work of the six days. Plants 
and animals were generated or produced 
from preexisting material — “ were grad- 
ually developed, by natural operations, 
finder the Divine administration.” 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 


139 


“ In those first days,” he tells us, 
“ God created the creature in its origin 
and cause— originaliter, vel causa liter, 
and afterwards rested from this work. 
Nevertheless, He subsequently, until 
now, works according to the adminis- 
tration of created things by the work of 
propagation. Now, to produce plants 
from the earth belongs to the work of 
propagation; therefore, on the third day 
plants were not produced in act, but 
only in their cause — Non ergo in tertia 
die productce sunt plantoe in actu sed 
causaliter tantum .” 

Elsewhere, in defending the opinion 
of St. Augustine, he writes : 

“ When it is said, 4 Let the earth bring 
forth the green herb,’ Gen. i, n, it is not 
meant that plants were then produced 
actually in their proper nature, but that 
there was given to the earth a germinative 
power to produce plants by the work 
of propagation; so that the earth is then 
said to have brought forth the green 
herb and the tree yielding fruit in this 
wise, viz., that it received the power of 
producing them — producendi accepisse 
virtutem .” 

And this he confirms by the authority 
of Scripture, Gen. ii, 4 — where it is said: 

“ These are the generation of the 
heaven and the earth, when they were 


140 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

created, in the day that the Lord God 
made the heaven and the earth, and 
every plant of the field, before it sprung 
up in the earth, and every herb in the 
ground before it grew” 

“From this passage,” continues the 
Angelic Doctor, “two things are elic- 
ited : First, that all the works of the 
six days were created in the day that God 
made the heaven and earth and every 
plant of the field; and, accordingly, 
that plants, which are said to have been 
created on the third day, were produced 
at the same time that God created the 
heaven and the earth. Secondly, that 
plants were then produced, not in act, 
but according to causal virtues only; in 
that the power of producing them was 
given the earth— fuerunt productce non 
in actu , seel secundum rationes causal es 
tantum , quia data fuit virtus terree pro- 
ducendi illas. This is meant, when it 
is said that it produced every plant of 
the field before it actually sprang up in 
the earth by the work of administration, 
and every herb of the earth before it 
actually grew . Prior, therefore, to 
their actually rising over the earth, they 
were made causally in the earth — Ante 
ergo quam actu orirentur super ter ram, 
factcB sunt causaliter in terra. This 
view is likewise confirmed by reason. 
For in those first days God created the 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 


141 


creature either in its cause or in its 
origin, or in act, in the work from which 
He afterwards rested. Nevertheless, 
He subsequently, until now, works ac- 
cording to the administration of created 
things by the work of propagation. 
But to produce plants in act out of the 
earth, belongs to the work of propaga- 
tion ; because it suffices for their pro- 
duction that they have the power of the 
heavenly bodies, as it were, for their 
father, and the efficacy of the earth in 
place of a mother. Therefore, plants 
were not actually produced on the 
third day, but only causally . 1 After 
the six days, however, they were actually 
produced according to their proper 
species, and in their proper nature by 
the work of administration.” “ In like 
manner fishes, birds and animals were 
produced in those six days causally and 
not actually — Similiter pisces , aves et 
animalia in illis sex diebus causaliter 
et non actualiter producta sunt” 

Such, then, is the teaching of the 
illustrious Bishop of Hippo and of the 
Angel of the Schools, respecting cre- 
ation and the genesis of the material 
universe. To the striking passages just 

i It will be noted that a portion of this extract 
from “ De Potentia,” is verbally identical with a 
part of what is found in the preceding quotation 
from the “ Summa.” 


142 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


quoted, I can do nothing better than 
add Father Harper’s beautiful and elo- 
quent commentary as found in his 
splendid work, “ The Metaphysics of the 
School.” 

“ In the creation,” declares the learned 
Jesuit, “represented by Moses in the 
manner best suited to the intellectual 
calibre of the chosen people, under the 
figure of six days — as St. Thomas, quot- 
ing from St. Augustine, remarks — the 
elements alone, among earthly things, 
were actually produced by the creative 
act ; but simultaneously, in the primor- 
dial matter thus actuated by the ele- 
mental forms, a virtue was implanted, 
dispositive towards all the material 
forms conditionally necessary to the 
perfection of the earthly universe. But 
it was an ordered potentiality ; so that 
in the after Evolution of the substantial 
forms, the lower should precede the 
higher ; and that these latter should 
presuppose and virtually absorb the 
former. Thus were the figurative six 
days completed with the sowing of 
the seed of the future cosmos. There- 
upon ensued a Sabbath of rest. The 
fresh, elemental world was sown with 
the germs of future beauty in diverse 
forms of life, in diversity of species, 
and possibly, varieties under the same 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION, 


143 


species. But these, as yet, lay hidden 
in the womb of nature. No earthly 
substance existed in act save the simple 
bodies; primordial matter under its first 
and lowest forms. Such was the earthly 
creation when the first Sabbath closed 
in upon it. After this Sabbath followed 
the order of Divine administration, 
wherein, as it continues to the present 
hour, the Divine Wisdom and Omnipo- 
tence superintended the natural Evolu- 
tion of visible things, according to a 
constant order of His own appointing, 
amid ceaseless cycles of alternate cor- 
ruptions and generations. 

“ Compound inanimate substances 
were first evolved by means of the 
seminal forces bestowed on nature. 
Then, from the bosom of these com- 
pounds sprang into being the green 
life of herb, plant and tree, gradually 
unfolding into higher and more com- 
plex forms of loveliness as the ages 
rolled on, according to the virtual order 
imprinted at first upon the obedient 
matter. Thence onward marched the 
grand procession of life, marking epochs 
as it went along, till it culminated in 
man, the paragon of God’s visible uni- 
verse.” 

The Divine Administration. 

But what, it may be inquired, does 
St. Thomas mean by the work of Divine 


144 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


administration ? This phrase has been fre- 
quently employed, and it is of sufficient 
importance to demand an explanation. 

No creature, as theology teaches, is 
competent to elicit a single act, even 
the smallest and most insignificant, 
without the cooperation of God. We 
cannot raise a foot, or move a finger, 
without Divine assistance. This is in- 
cluded in Divine administration, but it 
is far from being all that is so included. 
Over and above this the Divine adminis- 
tration embraces the order, or laws, by 
which the world is governed. It em- 
braces, too, the Evolution of living 
things, without parentage, out of the 
potentiality of matter, or, what amounts 
to the same thing, it includes the proxi- 
mate disposition of matter for the Evo- 
lution of organic from inorganic matter, 
and the higher from the lower forms of 
life. God, consequently, “ must have 
been the sole efficient Cause of the 
organization requisite, and, therefore, 
in the strictest sense, He is said to have 
formed such living things, and, in par- 
ticular, the human body, out of pre- 
existent matter.” 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 145 

In the teachings of St. Augustine 
and St. Thomas respecting the creation 
and Evolution of the sum of all things, 
there is nothing uncertain, equivocal or 
vacillating. True to the declaration of 
the Inspired Record, and true to the 
faith of the Church from the earliest 
ages of her history, they teach that in 
the beginning God created all things, 
visible and invisible, and that He still 
continues to protect and govern by His 
Providence all things which He hath 
made, “reaching from end to end 
mightily, and ordering all things sweet- 
ly.” They tell us, not only that the 
Creator is “ Lord of Heaven and earth, 
Almighty, Eternal, Immense, Incom- 
prehensible, Infinite in intelligence, in 
will and in all perfections,” not only 
that He is “ absolutely simple and im- 
mutable spiritual substance, really and 
essentially distinct from the world,” 
but also that he is omnipresent, omnis- 
cient ; that for Him there is no past nor 
future ; that all is present, and that “ all 
things are bare and open to His eyes.” 

According to the Fathers and the 
Schoolmen, therefore, as well as 
s. D.— 10 


146 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

according to Catholic Dogma, God is 
the First Cause; finite beings are but 
secondary causes. God is the Primary 
Cause — Causa causarum / while all 
finite causes are merely instrumental. 
God is preeminently the integral and 
efficient Cause of all things, for He, pre- 
eminently, is the Cause “whence,” to 
use the words of Aristotle, “is the first 
beginning of change or of rest.” 

Efficient Causality of Creatures. 

But God, although the true, efficient 
Cause of all things, has willed, in order 
to manifest more clearly His wisdom 
and power and love, to receive the co- 
operation of His creatures, and to confer 
on them, as St. Thomas puts it, “ the 
dignity of causality — dignitatem caus- 
andi conferre voluit .” It is not, how- 
ever, as the Angelic Doctor declares, 
“ from any indigence in God that He 
wants other causes for the act of pro- 
duction.” He does not require the co- 
operation of secondary causes because 
He is unable to dispense with their aid. 
He is none the less omnipotent because 
He has chosen to act in conjunction with 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 147 

works of His own hand, for it is mani- 
fest that He who has created the causes, 
is able to produce the effects which 
proceed from such causes. 

I have said that the efficient causality 
of creatures serves to disclose the wis- 
dom and power and love of the Creator. 
It is true, but here again I shall quote 
from the eloquent and profound Father 
Harper, who so beautifully sums up all 
that may be said on the subject, that I 
need make no apology for quoting him 
in full. 

The efficient causality of the creature 
serves to manifest God’s wisdom, for, to 
quote Father Harper : 

“ There is greater elaboration of de- 
sign. To plan out a universe of finite en- 
tities, differing in essence and in grades 
of perfection, is doubtless a work of 
superhuman wisdom; but to include in 
the design the further idea of conferring 
on these entities a complex variety of 
forces, qualities, active and passive, 
faculties by virtue of which nature 
should ever grow out of itself and de- 
velop from lower to higher forms of 
existence, and should multiply along 
definite lines of being ; to conceive 
a world whose constituents should 


148 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

ceaselessly energize on one another, yet 
without confusion and in an admirable 
order ; to allow to the creature its own 
proper causality, and yet, even spite of 
the manifold action of free will in a 
countless multiplicity of immortal in- 
telligences, to elaborate a perfect unity; 
sutely this is an incalculably higher 
manifestation of wisdom. It serves to 
manifest the power of the Creator ; for 
every cause is proportioned to the effect. 
But the completion of a design such as 
has been described, is a more noble 
effect than if every production of nat- 
ural operation were the result of im- 
mediate creation. The manufacture of 
a watch is a noble work of art ; but if a 
watch should be made capable of con- 
structing other watches in succession, 
and of winding up, regulating, clean- 
ing, repairing its offspring, there is no 
one who would not be free to admit 
that the inventor would possess a virtue 
of operation incomparably superior to 
his fellow-men. It serves to manifest 
the love and goodness of the Creator ; 
since the Divine communication is more 
complete. Love shows itself in the de- 
sire of communicating its own perfec- 
tion to the object of love ; it is essen- 
tially self-diffusive. By bestowing on 
the creature existence which is a like- 
ness to His own existence, the Creator 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 


149 


communicates of His own, so to say, to 
the object of His charity ; but by be- 
stowing likewise an intrinsic activity 
proportioned in each case to the ex- 
igencies of the particular nature, he 
completes the similitude. By this con- 
summation of the creature He causes it 
to partake, in its own proper measure, 
of the diffusiveness of His goodness. 
There is nothing of solitariness in nature. 
By the very constitution of things, be- 
ing is impelled to impart to being of its 
own perfection. Notonlydoes the sub- 
stantial form bestow upon the matter a 
specific determination, and the matter 
sustain the form in being ; not only 
does accident give its complement of 
perfection to substance, and substance 
give and preserve the being of accident; 
not only does part conspire with part 
towards the completeness of the whole, 
and the whole delight in the welfare of 
each part ; but substance generates sub- 
stance, accident, in its way, accident, 
and the whole visible universe is knit 
together in the solidarity of a common 
need and of mutual support. Passing 
upwards, the orders of spiritual being, 
both those that are included in the visi- 
ble creation and those which are pure 
intelligences, bear in the activity of 
their will, which acts upon all that is 
around it, a yet nearer resemblance to 


]50 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

the charity of the Creator. Assuredly, 
then, the causal activity of finite being 
is not superfluous ; even though God 
can, by His sole omnipotence, do all 
that is effected by His creature.” 

Such then, is the theistic conception 
of Evolution; such the Catholic idea as 
developed and taught by the Church’s 
most eminent saints and Doctors. It 
were easy to add the testimony of other 
philosophers and theologians; but this 
is not necessary. It is not my purpose 
to write a treatise on the subject, but 
merely to indicate by the declarations 
of a few accredited witnesses, to show 
from the teachings of those “ whose 
praise is in all the churches,” that there 
is nothing in Evolution, properly under- 
stood, which is antagonistic either to 
revelation or Dogma; that, on the con- 
trary, far from being opposed to faith, 
Evolution, as taught by St. Augustine 
and St. Thomas Aquinas, is the most 
reasonable view, and the one most in 
harmony with the explicit declarations 
of the Genesiac narrative of creation. 
This the Angelic Doctor admits in so 
many words. God could, indeed, have 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 


151 


created all things directly; He could 
have dispensed with the cooperation of 
secondary causes; He could have re- 
mained in all things the sole immediate 
efficient Cause, but in His infinite wis- 
dom He chose to order otherwise. 

Anthropomorphism. 

But not only does the theistic Evolu- 
tion of St. Augustine and the Angelic 
Doctor exclude special creations ; it 
dispels as completely all anthropomor- 
phic views of the Deity, and is at the 
same time thoroughly opposed to the 
doctrine of constant Divine interference 
in the operations of nature. 

St. Augustine shows how distasteful 
Anthropomorphism is to him when, 
among other things, he declares : 

“To suppose that God formed man 
from the dust with bodily hands is very 
childish. . . . God neither formed man 
with bodily hands nor did He breathe 
upon him with throat and lips.” 

We know, indeed, that God created 
all things from nothing, but we cannot 
imagine, nay, we cannot conceive how 
He created. We know that the universe 
came into existence in virtue of a simple 


152 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

Divine fiat, but no human intellect is 
able to conceive how matter and spirit 
were educed from nothingness into ac- 
tuality. The very feebleness and limi- 
tations of human language and human 
thought compel us, when speaking of 
God and His operations, to employ 
terms that often but faintly adumbrate 
the magnificent realities of which we can 
never form an adequate conception. We 
speak of God as creator, as giving ear 
to the prayers of His creatures, as being 
holy, just, powerful, omniscient, om- 
nipresent, but we do not thereby think 
of Him as some sort of magnified man, 
as skeptics are often wont to assert. 
When we speak of the attributes and 
perfections of the Deity, we must needs 
use the same terms as when we speak 
of corresponding attributes and perfec- 
tions in man. This, however, does not nec- 
essarily imply an anthropomorphic con- 
ception of God, and still less does it, as 
is so often assumed, imply the alterna- 
tive of a blank and hopeless skepticism. 

“God,” as a scholarly writer truth- 
fully observes, “ contains in Himself all 
human perfections, but not in the same 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 


153 


manner as they exist in man. In man 
they are limited, dependent, condi- 
tioned, imperfect, finite nature. In God 
they are unlimited, independent, abso- 
lute, perfect, infinite nature. In man 
they can be separated one from the 
other; in God they are all one and the 
same, and we can distinguish the Divine 
attributes after our human fashion, only 
because their perfect and absolute 
unity contains virtually in itself an in- 
finite multiplicity. In man they are 
essentially human; in God they are all 
Divine. In man they belong to the 
lower and created order; in God, to a 
higher and uncreated order. In man 
any moral perfection may be present or 
absent without the essential nature of 
man being thereby affected; in God, 
the absence of any perfection would 
thereby rob Him ipso facto of His Diety. 
Whatever the human attribute can per- 
form, the Divine attribute can do in a 
far more perfect way, and the most ex- 
alted exhibition of human perfection is 
but a faint shadow of the Divine per- 
fection that gave it birth. The most 
unbounded charity, mercy, gentleness, 
compassion, in man, is feeble indeed, 
and miserable, compared with the char- 
ity, mercy, gentleness, compassion of 
God. The Divine perfection is the 
ideal of human perfection, its model, its 


154 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


pattern, its origin, its efficient Cause, the 
source from which it came, the end for 
which it was created .” 1 

Divine Interference. 

Theistic Evolution, in the sense in 
which it is advocated by St. Augustine 
and St. Thomas, excludes also Divine 
interference, or constant unnecessary 
interventions on the part of the Deity, 
as effectually as it does a low and nar- 
row Anthropomorphism. Both these 
illustrious Doctors declare explicitly, 
that “ in the institution of nature we do 
not look for miracles, but for the laws of 
nature.” 

Only the crudest conception of deriv- 
ative creation would demand that the 
theist should necessarily, if consistent, 
have recourse to continued creative fiats 
to explain the multifold phenomena 
connected with inorganic or organic 
Evolution. For, as already explained, 
derivation or secondary creation is not, 
properly speaking, a supernatural act. 
It is merely the indirect action of Deity 
by and through natural causes. The 


i The Month , Sept. 1882, p. 20. 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 155 

action of God in the order of na- 
ture is concurrent and overruling, 
indeed, but is not miraculous in 
the sense in which the word “ mi- 
raculous” is ordinarily understood. 
He operates by and through the 
laws which He instituted in the be- 
ginning, and which are still main- 
tained by His Providence. Neither the 
doctrine of the Angel of the Schools 
nor that of the Bishop of Hippo, re- 
quires the perpetual manifestation of 
miraculous powers, interventions or ca- 
tastrophes. They do not necessitate 
the interference with, or the dispensa- 
tion from, the laws of nature, but admit 
and defend their existence and their 
continuous and regular and natural 
action. Only a misunderstanding of 
terms, only a gross misapprehension of 
the meaning of the word “creation,” 
only, in fine, the “ unconscious Anthro- 
pomorphisms” of the Agnostic and the 
Monist, would lead one to find any- 
thing irreconcilable between the legiti- 
mate inductions of science and the 
certain and explicit declarations of 
Dogma. 


156 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Science and Creation. 

From what has already been learned, 
it is manifest that physical science is 
utterly incompetent to pronounce on 
primary or absolute creation. This, 
being by the very nature of the case, 
above and beyond observation and 
experiment, it is, for the same reason, 
necessarily above and beyond the sphere 
of science or Evolution. The Rev. 
Baden Powell clearly expresses this 
idea in his “Philosophy of Creation,” 
when he affirms : 

“ Science demonstrates incessant past 
changes, and dimly points to yet earlier 
links in a more vast series of develop- 
ment of material existence; but the idea 
of a beginning , or of creation , in the 
sense of the original operation of the 
Divine volition to constitute nature and 
matter, is beyond the province of physical 
philosophy.” 

Again, belief in derivative creation is 
secure from attack, on the part of nat- 
ural science, for the simple reason that 
it does not repose on physical phenom- 
ena at all, but on psychical reasons, or 
on our primary intuitions. Modern sci- 
entists are continually confounding pri- 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 157 

mary with secondary creation, and speak- 
ing of the latter as if it were absolute 
creation, or as if it implied special super- 
natural action. This confusion of terms 
is at the bottom of many of the utter- 
ances of Darwin and Huxley, and is the 
cause of numerous erroneous views which 
they ascribe to their opponents. Thus, 
Darwin asks those who are not pre- 
pared to assent to his evolutionary no- 
tions, if “they really believe that at 
innumerable periods in the earth’s his- 
tory, certain elemental atoms have been 
commanded suddenly to flash into living 
tissues?” And Huxley ridicules the 
notion that “ a rhinoceros tichorhinus 
suddenly started from the ground like 
Milton’s lion, ‘pawing to get free its 
hinder parts,’ ” and facetiously speaks 
of the improbability of “ the sudden con- 
currence of half-a-ton of inorganic mole- 
cules into a live rhinoceros.” 

A grave objection, quotha! As if a 
belief in creation necessarily connoted 
the grotesque assumptions which he at- 
tributes to those who are not of his mind, 
Huxley and Darwin set up poor, impo- 
tent dummies, and forthwith proceed 


158 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


to knock them down, and then im- 
agine they have proven the views of 
their adversaries to be untenable, if not 
absurd. A reference to what has already 
been said respecting absolute and de- 
rivative creation, and a recollection that 
creation by and through secondary 
causes is not a supernatural, but a nat- 
ural act, will show how much ignorance 
of the elench there is in the difficulty 
suggested by the two naturalists just 
named. 


Limitations of Specialists. 

In Darwin’s case, one is not surprised 
that he should, in good faith, urge the 
objection included in the quotation just 
made from him, because he informs us 
himself that he was mentally disquali- 
fied for the discussion of abstract or 
metaphysical questions. “My power,” 
he writes in his autobiography, “ to 
follow a long and purely abstract train 
of thought, is very limited ; and there- 
fore I could never have succeeded with 
metaphysics or mathematics.” But aside 
from his incompetence as a metaphysi- 
cian, the very doctrine he championed 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 159 

so lustily seemed to render him nebu- 
lous and skeptical even about primary 
intuitions. Having occasion to give an 
opinion on the “Creed of Science,” he 
wrote : 

“ The horrid doubt always arises 
whether the convictions of man’s mind, 
which has been developed from the 
mind of the lower animals, are of any 
value, or at all trustworthy. Would 
anyone trust in the convictions of a 
monkey’s mind, if there are any con- 
victions in such a mind?” 

One is not surprised, I repeat, to find 
metaphysical and theological errors in 
Darwin’s works, for, in addition to his 
acknowledged incapacity in abstract 
subjects, his mind was so preoccupied 
with biology in its bearings on Evolu- 
tion, that he was practically indifferent 
to, if not oblivious of, everything out- 
side his immediate sphere of research. 
He is, indeed, a striking illustration of 
the truth of Cardinal Newman’s observa- 
tions when he declares : 

“ Any one study, of whatever kind, ex- 
clusively pursued, deadens in the mind 
the interest, nay, the perception of any 
other. Thus, Cicero says, Plato and De- 
mosthenes, Aristotle and Isocrates, might 


160 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


have respectively excelled in each other’s 
province, but that each was absorbed in 
his own. Specimens of this peculiarity 
occur every day. You can hardly per- 
suade some men to talk about anything 
but their own pursuits ; they refer the 
whole world to their own center, and 
measure all matters by their own rule, 
like the fisherman in the drama, whose 
eulogy on his deceased lord was, ‘ he 
was so fond of fish.’ ” 

But the observations of the learned 
cardinal are not more applicable to Dar- 
win than to a host of contemporary 
scientists, who fancy there is an irrec- 
oncilable conflict between science on 
the one hand, and religion on the other. 
They fail to see that the conflict, so far 
as it exists, is due either to bias or 
ignorance, or to the fact that the very 
nature of their studies has imposed limi- 
tations on them, which utterly unfit them 
for pronouncing an opinion on the sub- 
jects which they are often in such haste 
to discuss. 

Evolution and Catholic Teaching. 

From the foregoing pages, then, it is 
clear that far from being opposed to 
faith, theistic Evolution is, on the 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 161 

contrary, supported both by the declara- 
tions of Genesis and by the most ven- 
erable philosophical and theological 
authorities of the Church. I have men- 
tioned specially St. Augustine and St. 
Thomas, because of their exalted posi- 
tion as saints and Doctors, but it were 
an easy matter to adduce the testimony 
of others scarcely less renowned for 
their philosophical acumen and for their 
proved and unquestioned orthodoxy; 
but this is unnecessary. Of course no 
one would think of maintaining that 
any of the Fathers or Doctors of the 
Church taught Evolution in the sense 
in which it is now understood. They 
did not do this for the simple reason 
that the subject had not even been 
broached in its present form, and be- 
cause its formulation as a theory, under 
its present aspect, was impossible before 
men of science had in their possession 
the accumulated results of the observa- 
tion and research of these latter times. 
But they did all that was necessary 
fully to justify my present contention; 
they laid down principles which 
are perfectly compatible with theistic 
s. D.-ll 


162 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

Evolution. They asserted, in the most 
positive and explicit manner, the doc- 
trine of derivative creation as against 
the theory of a perpetual direct creation 
of organisms, and turned the weight of 
their great authority in favor of the 
doctrine that God administers the 
material universe by natural laws and 
not by constant miraculous interven- 
tions. As far as the present argument 
is concerned, this distinct enunciation 
of principles makes for my thesis quite 
as much as would the promulgation of a 
more detailed theory of Evolution. 

The Scholastic Doctrine of Species. 

It may, however, be objected, that 
the authorities so far quoted favor de- 
velopment only in a vague or general 
way; that the Fathers and Scholastics 
distinctly maintained certain views 
which are absolutely incompatible with 
Evolution as now understood. It is 
said, for instance, that the scholastic 
doctrine of species, to which all the 
Schoolmen are irrevocably committed, 
completely negatives the view that their 
principles are compatible with organic 


THEISM AND EVOL UTION. } 63 

development. We are told that one of 
the cardinal doctrines of the School is 
the immutability of species ; that species 
are but realizations of the archetypes, 
the “ grand ideas,” which have existed 
from all eternity in the mind of the 
Creator ; that to affirm the immutability 
of species would be tantamount to as- 
serting a change in the Divine proto- 
types, or to predicating a mutation in 
the Divine Essence itself. 

In answer to this objection I shall 
confine myself to the teachings of the 
Angelic Doctor alone, as I am perfectly 
willing to rest my case for Evolution on 
his certain teachings respecting the na- 
ture of species. 

It is necessary to premise here, that 
in the inductive sciences, St. Thomas, 
like his illustrious master, St. Augus- 
tine, teaches that disputed points are not 
to be settled by a priori reasoning, but 
rather by observation and experiment. 
No one, therefore, who is even slightly 
acquainted with the mind of the Angelic 
Doctor, and who duly appreciates his 
penetrating and comprehensive genius, 
would for a moment credit him with 


164 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


binding his disciples and successors to 
metaphysical formulae, in matters of ex- 
perimental science and thus obliging 
them to reject the results of experiment 
and observation when they might hap- 
pen to contravene the dicta or assump- 
tions of metaphysics. Such an imputa- 
tion would not be borne out by his 
teaching and would be as unjust as it 
would be erroneous. 

To remove ambiguity and clear away 
difficulties, it may be observed that the 
word “species” may be envisaged un- 
der three different aspects, to wit : the 
metaphysical, the logical, and the phys- 
iological or real. As to the metaphys- 
ical and logical aspects, both the An- 
gelic Doctor and the School generally, 
are one in attributing to species an ab- 
solute fixity. 

With metaphysical and logical spe- 
cies, however, we are not at present 
concerned. I am quite willing to leave 
these to the metaphysician to treat them 
as he lists. The question now at issue 
regards only physiological species. Is 
the species of which the biologist 
speaks variable, or does it belong to 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 


165 


the category of immutable metaphys- 
ical species? This is a question of 
science and not of metaphysics. If it 
can be proven by the sciences of obser- 
vation and experiment, that species are 
permanent and invariable, then the real 
or physiological species of the natural- 
ist, in so far as they are immutable, at 
once enter into the category of the 
metaphysical species of the School. If, 
on the contrary, science can demon- 
strate that species are variable, then 
the fancied identity of physiological 
and metaphysical species immediately 
disappears. The determination, how- 
ever, whether living types, plant or 
animal, are variable or permanent; 
whether physiological species shall be 
classed in the same category as immu- 
table metaphysical species, is, I repeat, 
a matter not of a priori reasoning, but 
wholly and solely one of observation 
and experiment. 

In his “ Summa ” the Angelic Doctor 
admits, without hesitation, the possibil- 
ity of a new species, for he tells us : 

“New species, if they make their ap- 
pearance, preexisted in certain active 


166 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


virtues, as animals are produced from 
carrion under the influence communi- 
cated in the beginning to the stars and 
the elements.” 

More than this, he distinctly admits 
the mutability of species. To the ob- 
jection that specie^ must be immutable 
because they correspond with arche- 
types in the Divine intelligence, that 
they must be immutable because their 
forms are essentially immutable, he re- 
plies, that “immutability is proper to 
God only,” and that “forms are subject 
to the variations of the reality.” 

Again, it is erroneously supposed 
that St. Thomas always attaches to the 
terms genus and species, the same mean- 
ing as is given them by modern natural- 
ists. This is a grave misapprehension. 
It will suffice to adduce a single in- 
stance in disproof of this notion. For 
example, the Angelic Doctor places 
man and animal in the same genus. 
But, if, in the mind of St. Thomas, the 
word genus were in this instance to be 
understood in its modern sense, it 
would, as Pere Leroy puts it, be tan- 
tamount to admitting the “ principle of 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 167 

materialism.” Obviously, therefore, the 
term genus is to be understood in a 
much more comprehensive sense. For 
a similar reason, species, the immediate 
subdivision of genus, must likewise 
have a much wider signification than 
it has in a strict technical sense. If we 
desire to have a measure of the relative 
amplitude of species as compared with 
genus, in the passage just quoted, in 
which genus is made to embrace man 
and animal, we must, as Pere Leroy 
pertinently remarks, make species cor- 
respond to what naturalists now de- 
nominate a kingdom. Thus understood, 
species, in the instance referred to, 
would be immutable, but not otherwise. 

It is a mistake, then, to suppose that 
the meaning of the term species, in its 
physiological sense, was fixed by the 
Angelic Doctor. Neither did it receive 
the signification afterwards ascribed to 
it from any of the other Schoolmen or 
mediaeval theologians. Nor does such 
a meaning find any warrant in the 
teachings of the Fathers or in Scripture. 
Whence, then, the origin of the word 
in the sense so long attributed to it by 


168 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

special creationists? This is a question 
deserving of consideration, for an an- 
swer to it, if it does not remove wholly 
many difficulties, will at least clear the 
field for intelligent discussion. 

Milton and Ray. 

Incredible as it may seem, it was a 
poet who fastened on science the sig- 
nification which the word “ species ” has 
so long borne. Prior to Milton’s time 
the meaning of the term, as employed 
by naturalists, was vague and change- 
able in the extreme. Not so, however, 
after the appearance of “ Paradise 
Lost.” At once the account of crea- 
tion, as given in this immortal poem, 
began to be regarded as “ a sort of 
inspired gloss on the early chapters of 
Genesis,” and the botanist Ray, a 
younger contemporary of Milton, had, 
accordingly, no difficulty in giving to 
the word “ species ” a meaning which 
became as definite in natural history, as 
it had long before been in logic and 
metaphysics. The work of Milton and 
Ray was complete. What naturalists 
from the time of Aristotle had been un- 


THEISM AND EVOLUTION. J0Q 

able to do, was effected in less than a 
generation by a poet and a botanist. 
And so universally was their meaning 
of the word accepted, that it persisted 
in natural history usage, and almost 
without any objections being raised 
against it, for full two hundred years. 
It was adopted by Linnaeus and given 
wide-spread currency in the numerous 
works of the illustrious Swede. It was 
accepted by the great Cuvier and his 
school, and thus a definition of a single 
word, the meaning of which hinged on 
a well-known episode in a celebrated 
poem, served for two centuries to give 
permanency to a doctrine which, not- 
withstanding the progress Evolution 
has made, still has its supporters, in all 
parts of the world. Species were as- 
sumed to be fixed and invariable, be- 
cause the definition of the term, not the 
facts of nature, demanded it. Logical 
and metaphysical species were con- 
founded with physiological or real spe- 
cies. For this reason, as is apparent, 
the foundation of the rival theory of 
Evolution, special creation, rests on an 
assumption; an assumption which, in 


170 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

turn, is based on a misconception of 
terms, on what, in the last resort, is a 
verbal fallacy pure and simple. In- 
deed, the history of the word “ species ” 
is but another of the countless illustra- 
tions of the sage observation of Coler- 
idge, that “ errors in nomenclature are 
apt to avenge themselves by generating 
errors of idea; ” errors which, in turn, 
generate other errors and retard prog- 
ress in a way that cannot be estimated. 

The scholastic teaching respecting 
species does not, then, as is so often 
erroneously imagined, commit us to the 
doctrine of the immutability of species. 
Far from it. The question of the muta- 
bility or permanence of physiological 
species, the question of organic Evolu- 
tion, therefore, is, as just stated, one to 
be settled by empirical science, by ob- 
servation and experiment, and not by 
metaphysics. 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 
Spontaneous Generation. 

O UR next inquiry is concerning the 
teachings of the Fathers and the 
Schoolmen in respect of the origin and 
nature of life, and what views one may, 
consistently with revealed truth and 
Catholic Dogma, entertain regarding 
this all-important topic. These are 
questions, as is well known, in which 
evolutionists of all classes, monistic, 
agnostic, and theistic, are specially in- 
terested, and questions, consequently, 
which cannot be passed over in silence. 

The lower forms of life, were sup- 
posed by Greek and mediaeval philos- 
ophers to have originated spontaneously 
from the earth, or from putrefying or- 
ganic matter. From the time of Aris- 
totle to that of Redi, the doctrine of 
spontaneous generation was accepted 
without question, and it is scarcely yet 

171 


172 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

a generation since the brilliant experi- 
ments of Pasteur drove abiogenesis from 
its last stronghold. 

For over two thousand years the most 
extravagant notions were prevalent re- 
garding certain of the smaller animals. 
Virgil, in his famous episode of Aris- 
tseus, tells us of the memorable dis- 
covery of the old Arcadian for the pro- 
duction of bees from the tainted gore 
of slain bullocks. But this is but an 
echo of what was universally believed 
and taught. Not only was it thought 
that putrefying flesh gave rise to in- 
sects, and other minute animals, but it 
was the current opinion that different 
kinds of carrion generated diverse forms 
of life. Thus, as bees were produced 
from decomposing beef, so beetles were 
generated from horseflesh, grass-hoppers 
from mules, scorpions from crabs, and 
toads from ducks. Diodorus Siculus 
speaks of multitudes of animals devel- 
oped from the sun-warmed slime of the 
Nile valley. Plutarch assures us that 
the soil of Egypt spontaneously gener- 
ates rats, and Pliny is ready to confirm 
the statement by an example of a rat, 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE . 173 

half metamorphosed, found in the The- 
baid, of which the anterior half was that 
of a fully developed rodent, while the 
posterior half was entirely of stone! 
The Fathers and the Schoolmen, as we 
have seen, made no hesitation in accept- 
ing the doctrine of spontaneous gener- 
ation. But while ready to admit abio- 
genesis as a fact, they gave it a different 
interpretation from what it had received 
from the philosophers and naturalists of 
Greece and Rome. According to Epi- 
curus: “The earth is the mother of all 
living things, and from this simple ori- 
gin not even man is excepted.” Brute 
matter, said the Epicureans — as Haeckel 
and his school now proclaim — generates 
of its own power both vegetable and 
animal life; that is, non-living gives rise 
to living matter. But Christian philos- 
ophy, contrariwise, teaches that it is im- 
possible for inorganic to produce organic 
matter motu proprio , or by any natural 
inherent powers it may possess. “ The 
waters,” declares St. Basil, in speaking 
of the work of creation, “ were gifted 
with productive power, but this power 
was communicated to them by God.” 


174 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


“ From slime and muddy places, frogs, 
flies and gnats came into being,” he was 
willing to admit, “ but this was in virtue 
of a certain germinative force conferred 
on matter by the Author of nature.” 
“Certain very small animals may not 
have been created on the fifth and sixth 
days,” opines St. Augustine, “ but may 
have originated later from putrefying 
matter,” but still, even in this case, God 
it is who is their Creator. 

Spontaneous generation, therefore, 
was never a stumbling block either to 
the Fathers or Scholastics, because the 
creative act was always acknowledged, 
and because God was ever recognized 
as the Author, at least through second 
agents, of the diverse forms of life which 
were supposed to originate from inor- 
ganized matter. Whether He created 
all things absolutely and directly, or 
mediately and indirectly, it mattered 
not, so long as it was understood that 
nothing could exist without His will 
and cooperation. Whether, then the 
germ of life was specially created for 
each individual creature, or whether 
matter was endowed with the power of 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 175 

evolving what we call life, by the proper 
collocation of the atoms and molecules 
of which matter is constituted, was, 
from their point of view, immaterial, so 
far as dogma was concerned. The doc- 
trine of spontaneous generation might 
be an error, scientifically, but, even if 
so, there was nothing in it contrary to 
the truths of revelation. It was always 
and fully recognized that God was the 
sole and absolute Creator of matter, 
and that He, by the action of powers 
conferred on matter by certain seminal 
forces, as the Scholastics taught, dis- 
posed matter for the assumption of all 
the multitudinous forms into which it 
subsequently developed. 

The Nature of Life. 

Respecting the real nature, not the 
origin, of life, there have, indeed, been 
many and diverse opinions. Even now 
it is almost as much of an enigma as it 
was in the days of Aristotle, and we are at 
present, apparently, no better qualified 
to give a true definition of life than was 
the great Stagirite, twenty-three cen- 
turies ago. Living beings can, indeed, 


176 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


be distinguished from non-living beings 
by their structure, mode of genesis, and 
development, but this does not help us 
toward a clear and precise definition of 
life. 

According to the philosophers of an- 
tiquity there was a certain independent 
entity, or vital principle, which, uniting 
with the body, gives life, and, separat- 
ing from it, causes death. Plato and 
Aristotle, as is well known, admitted 
the existence of three souls, or anima- 
ting spirits, the vegetative for plants, 
the vegetative and sensitive for animals; 
and for man, an intelligent and reasoning 
spirit in addition to those possessed by 
plants and animals. Paracelsus and 
Van Helmont spoke of the principle of 
life under the name of archceus, and 
attempted to explain vital functions by 
chemical agencies. Others, still, “made 
the chyle effervesce in the heart, under 
the influence of salt and sulphur, which 
took fire together and produced the 
vital flame!” 

Bichat defines life as “ the sum total 
of the functions which resist death;” 
Herbert Spencer makes it “ the con- 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 177 

tinuous adjustment of internal rela- 
tions to external relations,” while Oliver 
Wendell Holmes tells us, that “Life is 
the state of an organized being in which 
it maintains, or is capable of maintain- 
ing, its structural integrity, by the 
constant interchange of elements with 
the surrounding media.” 

Such definitions, however, are almost 
as vague and unsatisfactory as the 
notions implied in the “ spirits ” of 
Aristotle and Plato, and in the archasus 
of Van Helmont and Paracelsus. They 
afford us no clearer conception of what 
life really is in itself, of what it is that 
constitutes the essential difference be- 
tween living and non-living matter, 
than we may derive from the idea of 
Hippocrates, who regarded “ unintelli- 
gent nature as the mysterious agent in 
the vital processes.” 

But whatever views we may entertain 
respecting the actual nature of life; 
whether we regard it as a force entirely 
different in kind from the purely phys- 
ical forces, or look upon it as a special 
coordination and integration of physical 
forces, acting in some mysterious way 
s. D.— 12 


178 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

on inanimate matter, and in such wise 
as to cause it to exhibit what we call 
the phenomena of life, the fact still re- 
mains, that at some period in the past 
history of our planet, the first germ of 
organic life made its appearance, and 
that, too, independent of any antecedent 
terrestrial germ. 

The Germ of Life. 

Whence this primordial germ, this 
first electric spark, which effected the 
combination of inorganic elements and 
transmuted non-living into living 
matter? Is it an “intellectual ne- 
cessity” that we should, with Tyndall, 
“ cross the boundary of the experi- 
mental evidence and discover in matter 
the promise and potency of all terres- 
trial life?” Must we believe with 
Lucretius that nature “ does all things 
spontaneously of herself, without the 
meddling of the gods;” and are we 
forced to regard matter and life as in- 
dissolubly joined, as entities which can- 
not be divorced from one another even 
in imagination? These are questions 
which are constantly recurring, and 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 179 

while in no wise sharing the material- 
istic views of Tyndall and Lucretius, 
we are, nevertheless, forced to admit 
that the problems involved are as diffi- 
cult to solve as those concerning the 
nature of life itself. 

In 1871, Sir William Thomson (Lord 
Kelvin), in an address at Edinburgh, 
discussed a theory which had been 
broached by a German speculator, Prof. 
Richter of Dresden, and involved the 
careering through space of “seed-bear- 
ing meteoric stones,” and the possibility 
of “one such falling on the earth,” 
and causing it, “by what we blindly 
call natural causes,” to become “cov- 
ered with vegetation.” “ The hypothe- 
sis,” the distinguished physicist tells 
us, “ may seem wild and visionary; 
all I maintain is, it is not unsci- 
entific.” 

But even if it were proved that the 
first germ of life had been brought by 
some seed-bearing meteorite from the 
depths of space, or from some far distant 
world, it would, as is obvious, afford no 
explanation either of the real nature or 
of the ultimate origin of life. It would 


180 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

be but removing the difficulty farther 
away; not giving it a solution. 

Still another question confronts us. 
Was there but one primordial germ, the 
origin and parent of all the multitu- 
dinous forms of life which now variegate 
and beautify the earth, or were there 
many germs independently implanted 
in the prepared soil of this globe of 
ours? And if many, did they make 
their appearance simultaneously, or at 
different and widely separated periods 
and localities? 

Darwin inclines to the belief that “ all 
animals and plants are descended from 
some one prototype.” From this pro- 
totype, or primordial germ, as from a 
common root, is developed “ the great 
tree of organic life,” a tree which is 
conceived as having “ two main trunks, 
one representing the vegetable and 
one the animal world,” while each 
trunk is pictured as “ dividing into a 
few main branches,” the branches sub- 
dividing into a number of branchlets, 
and these, in turn, into “smaller groups 
or twigs.” Prof. Weismann, on the 
other hand, is of the opinion that not 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 181 

one, but numerous organisms first arose 
“ spontaneously, simultaneously, and 
independently one of the other.” 

Such considerations as the foregoing, 
and the diverse and contradictory opin- 
ions to which they have given rise, com- 
pel one, will-he nill-he, to recognize the 
fact that science, I mean experimental 
science, can tell us nothing more about 
the origin of life than it can regarding 
the origin of matter. These are ques- 
tions which, by their very nature, are 
outside the sphere of inductive research, 
and their answers, so far as observation 
and experiment are concerned, must 
ever remain in inscrutable and insoluble 
mystery. 

Abiogenesis. 

So far as science can pronounce on the 
matter, spontaneous generation, as we 
have already learned, is, in the language 
of Pasteur, but a chimera. Even those 
whose theories imply, if they do not 
demand, the spontaneous origination 
of living from non-living matter, are 
forced to admit that there is, as yet, no 
warranty whatever for believing that 


182 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


abiogenesis obtains now, or ever has 
obtained, at any time in the past history 
of our globe. 

But suppose that some time or other 
it should be proved, that spontaneous 
generation not only has taken place, but 
that it actually occurs, hie et nunc f The 
fact that we have as yet no evidence 
that it ever has taken place, or that it 
does not occur now, does not prove that 
it is impossible. We may not be pre- 
pared to affirm, with Huxley and Fiske, 
that it must have taken place at some 
period in past history, but may we not 
admit the possibility of the occurrence? 
We certainly do not agree with Haeckel 
that we renounce our reason if we be- 
lieve in a special Divine intervention 
for the production of life. Nor do we 
admit that spontaneous generation was 
“ a necessary event in the process of the 
development of the earth,” because we 
contend that so far as observation and 
experiment go, they can tell us nothing 
more about the nature and origin of life 
than they tell us about the origin of 
matter. And yet, notwithstanding the 
last words of Van Beneden and Pasteur, 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 183 

regarding the origination of entozoa 
and microbes from antecedent life, it is 
quite conceivable that with the progress 
of research and the development of 
more delicate and powerful instruments 
of observation, it may one day be dem- 
onstrated that spontaneous generation 
not only can occur, but actually does 
occur daily in millions of cases, in forms 
of life as far below microbes in size and 
structure as these are below the entozoa. 
Without hesitation, therefore, we can 
subscribe to the declaration of Huxley 
when he states : 

“ With organic chemistry, molecular 
physics and physiology yet in their in- 
fancy, and every day making prodigious 
strides, I think it would be the height 
of presumption for any man to say that 
the conditions under which matter as- 
sumes the properties we call ‘ vital,’ may 
not, some day, be artificially brought 
together.” 

Artificial Production of Life. 

Should, then, such a discovery be 
made, as is possible and conceivable — I 
do not say probable — should some for- 
tunate investigator some day detect, in 


184 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


the great laboratory of nature, the 
transition of inorganic into organic and 
animated matter, or should he, by some 
happy chance, be able to transmute non- 
living into living matter, would there be 
in such a discovery aught that would 
contravene revealed truth, or militate 
against any of the received dogmas of 
the Church? 

To this question we can at once, and 
without hesitation, return an emphatic 
negative. The reply has, indeed, been 
indicated in the preceding pages, when 
discussing the views of the Fathers and 
the Schoolmen respecting spontaneous 
generation. Not only were they all 
fully persuaded of the fact of abiogenesis, 
5n the case of certain of the lower forms 
of life, but they also laid down principles 
which are quite compatible with the 
origination from brute matter not only 
of the lower, but also of the higher ani- 
mals. Far from being opposed to the 
Evolution of living from non-living 
matter, they, in many instances, favored 
it as the more probable hypothesis. 
But their views as to the efficient 
causes of such Evolution differed toto 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 185 

coelo from those entertained by modern 
monists and agnostics. The latter at- 
tribute to brute matter, which, by its 
very nature, is passive and inert, the 
power of passing unaided from a lower 
to a higher plane. They completely 
ignore the true formal and efficient 
causes of development, and base their 
theories exclusively upon a cause which 
is purely material. Not so the Fathers 
and Doctors of the Church. They tell 
us that “ the primordial elements alone 
were created in the strict sense of the 
term, and that the rest of nature was 
gradually developed out of these, ac- 
cording to a fixed order of natural 
operation, under the supreme guidance 
of Divine administration.” They teach 
that if spontaneous generation be, in- 
deed, a reality, the matter which under- 
goes change, “having been proximately 
disposed, by the action of heat and of 
other causes, of itself evolves into act 
by Divine intervention, rather than that 
the causal action of an inanimate body 
should be efficacious towards the gener- 
ation of life.” 

As to the artificial production of 


186 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


living from non-living matter, of which 
sundry enthusiastic chemists have so 
fondly dreamed, it can be positively as- 
serted that if ever effected it will be 
along lines quite different from those 
which certain over-sanguine speculators 
have indicated. 

The great feat achieved by Wohler, 
in 1828 , in making urea — an organic 
compound, previously supposed to be 
the result of vital forces alone — from 
inorganic matter, was but the prelude 
of those brilliant triumphs of synthetic 
chemistry which since have so fre- 
quently astonished the world. During 
the past few decades, especially, organic 
compounds of the most marvelous com- 
plexity have been manufactured in the 
laboratory, until now there are not want- 
ing chemists who affect to hope, that 
they will one day be able to rival na- 
ture herself in the number and complex- 
ity of her products. Their powers of 
analysis, we are willing to concede, are 
practically unlimited. They can tell 
us not only the composition of the divers 
compounds of the mineral world, but 
they are also able to give us the formulae 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 187 

of the most complex constituents of 
vegetable and animal tissue. And as 
time rolls on, the chemist’s mastery over 
matter and the forces of nature grows 
apace, and often at a rate that is aston- 
ishing to the chemist himself. He now 
plays with atoms and molecules as a 
juggler manipulates spheres of brass, 
and so great is his knowledge of affini- 
ties and equivalences, so complete his 
command over the hidden forces of 
allotropism and isomerism, that he can, 
with the utmost ease, accomplish what 
a few years ago would have been re- 
garded as thaumaturgy of the highest 
order. 

Protoplasm. 

The compound which has received the 
greatest share of attention, from those 
who have been looking forward to the 
ultimate production of animate matter, 
is protoplasm. This is the substance to 
which Huxley has given so much noto- 
riety under the designation of “ The 
Physical Basis of Life.” 

Chemically, protoplasm is composed 
of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitro- 
gen. At first it was regarded as a kind 


188 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


of albumen, called protein, and was 
viewed as a single compound of homo- 
geneous structure, it was spoken of as 
“ a kind of matter w hich is common to 
all living beings,” plants as well as an- 
imals; “ a single physical basis of life 
underlying all the diversities of vital 
existence.” “ It is,” says Huxley, “ the 
potter’s clay,” out of which all the Pro- 
tean forms of animal and plant life are 
fashioned. 

Now, how r ever, all this is changed. 
Protoplasm, it has been discovered, is 
not a single chemical compound with a 
definite and constant molecular struc- 
ture, as was formerly taught. It is 
something vastly different. Microscopy 
and micro -chemistry have demonstrated 
that it is composed of a dozen or more 
substances, all of the greatest complex- 
ity. Far from being a single, homo- 
geneous, transparent, structureless jelly, 
as described some years ago, and as 
still conceived by many who glibly talk 
about it, protoplasm, on the contrary, is 
a most highly organized structure, com- 
posed of complex liquid matter, gran- 
ules, fibres, tubules, nuclein, and 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 189 

exhibiting in the living organism the 
most marvelous properties and the most 
wonderful activity. Indeed, proto- 
plasm is a word that has almost van- 
ished from the nomenclature of the 
cytologist. And in its place we have a 
score or more of new terms, to desig- 
nate the constituents of what was but a 
few years ago regarded, even by the 
ablest exponents of science, as a single 
chemical compound of uniform composi- 
tion. Thus, in lieu of protoplasm, we now 
have nuclein, pyrenin, and nucleoplasm; 
paranuclein, amphipyrenin, and karyo- 
plasm, not to mention other compounds 
equally remarkable and complicated. 

Such being the case, there is obvi- 
ously no more hope of the chemist even- 
tually being able to manufacture pro- 
toplasm, than there is of his being able 
to produce a polyp or a sea-urchin. He 
may build up from their simple ele- 
ments complex compounds like urea, 
formic acid and indigo, because these 
have a definite molecular composition, 
but he can no more make even a micro- 
scopic speck of protoplasm than he can 
fashion a rose or a butterfly. 


190 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Another consequence follows from 
the recent discoveries regarding proto- 
plasm, and that is, the impossibility of 
originating life. If protoplasm is the 
simplest form of matter in which life 
exists, and if it is impossible to manu- 
facture even the smallest particle of in- 
animate protoplasm, much less living 
protoplasm, it is a fortiori impossible 
to produce an entity exhibiting the 
phenomena characteristic of a living 
being. 

For a similar reason, all likelihood of 
discovering evidence in favor of spon- 
taneous generation has vanished. One 
may not, indeed, assert that it is entirely 
impossible. So far, it is true, proto- 
plasm is the simplest substance which 
exhibits the phenomena of life, and we 
know of no kind of protoplasm which is 
simpler than that above mentioned. 
This, however, does not imply that there 
are not simpler forms of living matter. 
It is possible that there are living 
beings so simple that their composi- 
tion may be represented exactly by 
a chemical formula; that they have a 
fixed, definite, molecular arrangement, 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 191 

like some of our complex organic com- 
pounds. It is possible that ultimately 
the chemist may discover the proximate 
constituents of such a substance and be 
able to indicate how it is produced by 
nature, or how it may be manufactured 
in an inanimate condition in the labora- 
tory. All this is possible, all conceiv- 
able. The past triumphs of organic 
chemistry, as well as our increasing 
knowledge of the lower forms of life, 
permit such an assumption. Yet it is 
only an assumption. But so far as pro- 
toplasm is concerned, so far as there is 
question of the simplest unicellular 
moner which the microscopist has yet 
observed, we can unhesitatingly say 
that spontaneous generation is impos- 
sible. We may conceive how simple 
chemical forces can produce a chemical 
compound of even the greatest com- 
plexity. But we cannot picture to our- 
selves how such forces, unaided and 
alone, can produce an intricate organism, 
such as is even the lowest representa- 
tive of animate naturo. It were as easy 
to imagine a watch evolving itself spon- 
taneously from the raw material which 


192 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

composes it; to picture a man-of-war 
arising spontaneously from the piles of 
wood and stores of iron and brass in a 
shipyard. 

If, then, spontaneous generation is 
not a chimera, it is something which has 
far humbler beginnings than has ordi- 
narily been supposed. If it ever took 
place at all, it must have occurred in 
some homogeneous chemical compound 
which was the product of known chem- 
ical forces. And if this be true, the 
time which elapsed from the formation 
of such a living compound, until its de- 
velopment into the highly organized 
protoplasm which we now know, must 
have embraced as many long aeons as 
intervened between the advent of pro- 
toplasm and the first appearance of the 
higher orders of animal and plant life. 

The mechanical theory of life, it is 
thus seen, is far from being borne out 
by the known facts of science. It as- 
sumed the homogeneity of protoplasm ; 
and in this it was in error. It assumes 
the origin of life by the action on 
the elements of forces which are resi- 
dent in matter, and teaches that living 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. 193 

differs from brute matter only in the 
relative complexity of molecular struc- 
ture, and of the higher integration of 
forces which is the natural result of 
complexity of structure. When such 
assumption denies, as it usually does 
deny, the existence of any force outside 
of matter ; when it makes matter, as such, 
the sole cause of the countless evolu- 
tions which have occurred in the past 
development of the universe, when it 
attempts, as does Virchow, to resolve 
the production of the divers forms of 
life from inanimate matter into a ques- 
tion of mere mechanics ; when, finally, 
it not only ignores, but positively denies, 
the ever present, unceasing action of the 
Divine administration ; then we can as 
unhesitatingly pronounce it false, as it 
is demonstrably so in predicating ho- 
mogeneity of protoplasm. Under such 
circumstances it is as difficult for the 
theist, without assuming the intervention 
of a miracle, to conceive of the forma- 
tion of a single chemical compound 
from its constituent elements, not to 
speak of the spontaneous origination of 
living matter, as it was to Darwin to 
s. D .-13 


194 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

picture to his mind the production of 
an elephant by the sudden flashing of 
certain elemental atoms into living 
tissues. Given matter, however, and 
forces competent to transform matter — 
such forces, as well as the matter which 
they affect, being always under the 
guidance of the Divine administration — 
and there is nothing in the theory of the 
origination of living from not-living 
matter, that is contrary either to faith 
or philosophy. On the contrary, such a 
view is, as we have seen, quite in har- 
mony with both the one and the other. 
Under such conditions the spontaneous 
generation, either in the laboratory of 
nature or in that of the chemist, presents 
no greater difficulties than does the con- 
version of a bar of steel into a magnet. 
In both cases it is God who is the 
author of the change, yet God acting 
not directly, but through the instru- 
mentality of natural agencies ; through 
the “ seminal reasons ” and the laws of 
nature which He conferred on matter in 
the beginning. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 


The Missing Link. 

NOTHER question in connection 
with Evolution which has at- 
tracted even greater attention than 
spontaneous generation, is that respect- 
ing the animal origin of man. If it be 
true that living has evolved from hot- 
living matter ; if it be admitted that 
the higher are genetically related to 
the lower forms of life, then, we are 
told, the only logical inference is that 
man is descended from some form of 
animal. With the majority of contem- 
porary non-Catholic evolutionists, the 
conviction of the truth of man’s animal 
origin is so strong, that it is accepted 
as a fact which no longer admits of 
doubt. According to their view, all 
that remains is to trace man’s relation- 
ship with his dumb predecessor, to 
discover the “ missing link ” which 

195 


196 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

connects him with the beasts of the 
field, and the controversy is closed 
forever. 

Here again, as in the case of spon- 
taneous generation, we must carefully 
discriminate between fact and theory ; 
between positive evidence for man’s 
simian genealogy, and the various as- 
sumptions which so may evolutionists 
are ever too ready to ask us to accept. 

I can do no better than reproduce 
here the testimony of one who will not 
be accused of bias towards Theism ; 
who, far from being opposed to the 
theory of man’s descent from the ape, 
most strongly favors it, but who in- 
sists on having evidence of such con- 
nection before giving his assent. 1 
refer to the celebrated anatomist and 
anthropologist, Dr. Rudolph Virchow, 
than whom no one is more competent 
to give an opinion on this much-vexed 
question. 

In an address delivered before the 
twentieth general meeting of the Ger- 
man Anthropological Association, at 
Vienna, August, 1889, he gave a re- 
view of the progress of anthropology 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 197 

during the preceding two decades. In 
the course of his discourse he asserted, 
what he has more recently affirmed at 
Moscow and elsewhere, that there is as 
yet not a scintilla of evidence for the 
ape-origin of man, and that even the 
hope of discovering the missing link is 
something that does not find any war- 
ranty in the known facts of anthropol- 
ogy 

“At the time of our coming together 
twenty years ago,” he says, “ Darwin- 
ism had just made its first triumphal 
march through the world. My friend, 
Carl Vogt, with his usual vigor entered 
the contest, and through his personal 
advocacy secured for this theory a great 
adherence. At that time it was hoped 
that the theory of descent would con- 
quer, not in the form promulgated by 
Darwin, but in that advanced by his 
followers ; for we have to deal now not 
with Darwin but with Darwinians. No 
one doubted that the proof would be 
forthcoming, demonstrating that man 
descended from the monkey and that 
this descent from a monkey, or at least 
from some kind of an animal, would 
soon be established. This was a chal- 
lenge which was made and success- 
fully defended in the first battle. 


198 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Everybody knew all about it and was 
interested in it. Some spoke for it ; 
others against it. It was considered 
the greatest question of anthropology. 

“ Let me remind you, however, at 
this point, that natural science, so long 
as it remains such, works only with real, 
existing objects. A hypothesis may be 
discussed, but its significance can only 
be established by producing actual 
proofs in its favor, either by experi- 
ments or direct observations. This, 
Darwinism has not succeeded in doing. 
In vain have its adherents sought for 
connecting links which should connect 
man with the monkey. Not a single 
one has been found. The so-called 
pro-anthropos , which is supposed to 
represent this connecting link, has not 
as yet appeared. No real scientist 
claims to have seen him. Hence the 
pro-anthropos is not at present an object 
of discussion for an anthropologist. 
Some may be able to see him in their 
dreams, but when awake they will not 
be able to say they have met him. Even 
the hope of a future discovery of this 
pro-anthropos is highly improbable; for 
we are not living in a dream, or in an 
ideal world, but in a real one.” 

But although there is no tangible 
evidence of the existence of the missing 
link, connecting man with the monkey 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 


199 


or with lower forms of life, some people 
have, nevertheless, to use Virchow’s iron- 
ical words, “ seen him in their dreams.” 
They have seen him in the gorilla and 
in the orang-outang, in the lemur and 
in the kangaroo. They have observed 
him in the Neanderthal man, and in the 
men of Naulette, Denise, of Canstadt 
and of Eguisheim. De Mortillet has 
scrutinized him in the imaginary being 
that fashioned the flint-flakes of Thenay, 
Puy-Courny and Portugal. And so 
sure is he that he has discovered our 
immediate ancestor, that he has dubbed 
him with the name, anthropopithecus, 
the man-ape, or the ape-man. Darwin 
has described him as a hairy pithecoid 
animal, arboreal in habits and a denizen 
of “some warm forest-clad land.” Ac- 
cording to Cope, man is but “ a pen- 
tadactylic, plantigrade bunadont,” and 
is genetically connected with the lemu- 
roid, phenacodus and the anaptomor- 
phus homunculus , both of which flour- 
ished in the early Tertiary Period. 
Haeckel goes further back and discerns 
in the skull-less, brain-less and member- 
less amphioxus, an animal which we 


200 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


should regard with special veneration 
“as being of our own flesh and blood,” 
and as being the only one of all extant 
animals which “ can enable us to form 
an approximate conception of our ear- 
liest vertebrate ancestors.” All these 
imaginings, however, are, as Virchow 
truly observes, but dreams, hypotheses 
more or less extravagant, which have 
secured for their originators a certain 
amount of temporary notoriety, but 
which have no foundation whatsoever in 
any fact or legitimate induction of 
science . 1 

But if the fact of the animal origin of 
man has not been established, if there 
is no likelihood that it will be estab- 
lished, at least in the immediate future, 
even according to the testimony of 
those who are most desirous of seeing 
the pithecoid ancestry of man demon- 
strated, what is to be said of the opinions 
of those who, nevertheless, maintain 

i In his admirable study, “Apes and Man,” St. 
George Mivart, a pronounced evolutionist, gives, 
in a few words, the verdict of comparative anat- 
omy respecting the simian origin of man. He says, 
p. 172: “ It is manifest that man, the apes and half- 
apes, cannot be arranged in a single ascending 
series of which man is the term and culmination.” 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 201 

the animal origin of man, if not as 
a fact, at least as a tenable opinion? Is 
such an opinion compatible with Dogma, 
and can a consistent Catholic assent to 
any of the theories now in vogue which 
claim that man is genetically related to 
the inferior animals? This is a question 
which is often put, and one which, far 
from being treated with derision, as is 
so often the case, should receive a se- 
rious and a deliberate answer. 

We have seen that a belief in sponta- 
neous generation, and in the develop- 
ment of the higher forms of animal and 
plant life from the lower forms, is quite 
compatible w T ith both revelation and 
faith; but can this likewise be said of 
the development of man from a monkey 
or from any other inferior animal? 

The Human Soul. 

As to the soul of man we can at once 
emphatically declare, that it is in nowise 
evolved from the souls of animals, but 
is, on the contrary, and in the case of 
each individual, directly and imme- 
diately created by God Himself. I do 
not say that this is a Dogma of faith, 


202 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


because the question has never been 
formally defined by the Church. It is, 
however, Catholic doctrine, and has 
been taught almost universally from the 
time of the apostles . 1 

Creation of Man's Body. 

Man, however, is not a pure spirit, but 
a creature composed of a rational soul 
and a corruptible body. The question 
now arises: Was the body of the first 
man, the progenitor of our race, created 
directly and immediately by God, or was 
it created indirectly and through the op- 
eration of secondary causes? When the 
Bible tells us that “ the Lord God formed 
man from the slime of the earth,” are 
we to interpret these words in a rigor- 
ously literal sense, and to believe that 
the Creator actually fashioned Adam 
from the slime of the earth, as a potter 
would fashion an object from clay, or as 
an artist would produce the model of a 
statue from wax or plaster? Or, may 
we put a different interpretation on the 

i For a fuller account of the views held by cer- 
tain Fathers and theologians respecting the origin 
of the human soul, see “ Evolution and Dogma,” 
chap. vi. 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 203 

text and regard man, quoad corpus , as 
indirectly created, as the last and high- 
est term of a long series of evolutions 
which extend back to the first advent of 
life upon earth. In other words, is man, 
as to his body, the direct and special 
work of the Creator’s hands, or is he the 
descendant of some animal, some an- 
thropoid ape or some “missing link',” of 
which naturalists as yet have discovered 
no trace? 

This is one of the burning questions 
of science; one which has given to Dar- 
winism most of its notoriety and im- 
portance, and one which is inseparably 
linked with every theory of organic 
Evolution by whomsoever advocated. 
We have seen that, as Catholics, we are 
at liberty to accept the theory of Evo- 
lution as to all the multifarious forms of 
animal and plant life, that it is, indeed, 
a probable, if not the most probable, 
theory, and that far from derogating 
from the wisdom and omnipotence of 
God, it affords us, on the contrary, a 
nobler conception of the Deity than 
does the traditional view of special 
creation. May we now extend the 


204 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


Evolution theory so as to embrace the 
body of man, and allow that it is no ex- 
ception to the law which, we may admit, 
has obtained in the Evolution of all 
other forms of terrestrial life? Or, is 
there anything in Scripture and in the 
dogmatic teaching of the Church, that 
will preclude such a view of the ani- 
mal part of our first ancestor? 

We have already learned that, as a 
matter of fact, no positive evidence has 
been adduced in support of the simian 
origin of man, and that there is little, if 
any, reason to believe that such evi- 
dence will be forthcoming. Since the 
publication of Darwin’s “ Origin of 
Species,” naturalists have been explor- 
ing every portion of the globe for some 
trace of the missing link between man 
and the highest known mammal, a link 
which they said must exist somewhere 
if the hypothesis of Evolution of man 
be true. Explorations have been con- 
ducted in the dark forests of equatorial 
Africa, in the dense jungles of southern 
Asia, in the slightly-frequented islands 
of every sea, in the caves and lake- 
dwellings of Europe, in the mounds and 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 205 

cliff-dwellings of America, in the gravel 
beds and stalactitic deposits of the 
Tertiary and Quaternary Periods, in the 
tombs and burial places of prehistoric 
man; but all to no purpose. Men have, 
indeed, fancied that they had discovered 
the missing link in the dryopithecus, in 
pygmies of Central Africa, in the Anda- 
man Islanders, in the Ainos of Japan, 
in the anthropopithecus erectus, recently 
discovered by Dubois in the Pleistocene 
strata of Java, but if we may judge by 
those who are most competent to pro- 
nounce an opinion in the premises, the 
long-looked-for link connecting man 
with the ape is as far away now, and its 
existence as little probable, as it was 
thirty years ago, if indeed it is not less 
probable. 

But granting that the search for the 
link connecting man with the ape has 
so far been futile; admitting, with Vir- 
chow, that “the future discovery of 
this pro-anthropos is highly improb- 
able;” may we not, nevertheless, be- 
lieve, as a matter of theory, that there 
has been such a link, and that, corpo- 
really, man is genetically descended 


206 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

from some unknown species of ape or 
monkey? Analogy and scientific con- 
sistency, we are told, require us to ad- 
mit that man’s bodily frame has been 
subject to the same law of Evolution, if 
an Evolution there has been, as has 
obtained for the inferior animals. There 
is nothing in biological science that 
would necessarily exempt man’s cor- 
poreal structure from the action of this 
law. Is there, then, anything in Dogma 
or sound metaphysics, which would 
make it impossible for us, salva fide , to 
hold a view which has found such favor 
with the great majority of contemporary 
evolutionists? 

Mivart’s Theory. 

It was the distinguished biologist and 
philosopher, St. George Mivart, who 
first gave a categorical answer to these 
questions in his interesting little work, 
“ The Genesis of Species,” published 
nearly a quarter of a century ago. He 
contended that it is not “ absolutely nec- 
essary to suppose that any action differ- 
ent in kind took place in the production 
of man’s body, from that which took 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 207 

place in the production of the bodies of 
other animals, and of the whole material 
universe.” To judge from his subsequent 
writings, time has but confirmed him in 
this view, and afforded him opportunities 
of developing and corroborating his ar- 
gument. 

When Mivart’s book first appeared it 
was severely criticised by the Catholic 
press, both of the Old and the New 
World, and its author was in many in- 
stances denounced as a downright here- 
tic. Indeed, he was almost as roundly 
and as generally berated, by a certain 
class of theologians, as was Charles Dar- 
win after the publication of his “ Origin 
of Species.” In England, France and 
Germany the denunciation of the daring 
biologist was particularly vehement, and 
strenuous efforts were made to have his 
work put on the Index. It was almost 
the universal opinion among theologians 
that the proposition defended was heret- 
ical, and it was considered only a matter 
of a short time until it would be form- 
ally condemned. The book was for- 
warded to Rome, but, contrary to the 
expectations of all who were eagerly 


208 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


watching the course events would take, 
the book was not condemned. Neither 
was its author called upon to retract or 
modify the proposition which had been 
such an occasion of scandal. Far from 
censuring the learned scientist, the pope, 
Pius IX, made him a doctor of philoso- 
phy, and the doctor’s hat was conferred 
on him by no less a personage than Car- 
dinal Manning himself. 

Since 1871, when Mivart’s book was 
given to the world, a great change of 
sentiment has been effected among 
those who were at first so opposed to 
his opinions, and who imagined they 
discerned lurking in them not only rank 
heresy but also bald and unmitigated 
Materialism. Men have had time to 
examine dispassionately the suspected 
propositions, and to compare them w T ith 
both the formal definitions of the Church 
and the teachings of the Fathers. The 
result of unimpassioned investigation 
and mature reflection has been, not in- 
deed a vindication of the truth of the 
position of the English scientist, but a 
feeling that his theory may be tolerated, 
and that because it deals rather with a 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 209 

question of science than with one of 
theology. It has been shown that his 
propositions do not positively contra- 
vene any of the formal definitions of 
the Church, and that both St. Augustine 
and the Angelic Doctor, to mention 
no others, have laid down principles, 
which may be regarded as reconcilable 
with the thesis defended with so much 
ingenuity by the brilliant author of 
“ The Genesis of Species.” 

Angelic Doctor on Creation of Adam. 

The Angelic Doctor, in accord with 
the traditional teaching of the Fathers, 
holds that the body of the first man was 
immediately and directly formed by 
God himself, but he admits the possibil- 
ity of angelic intervention in its forma- 
tion and preparation for the reception 
of its informing principle, the rational 
soul. According to this view God cre- 
ated absolutely, ex nihilo, the human 
soul, but delegated to His creatures, 
the angels, the formation, or at least the 
formation in part, aliquod ministerium , 
of man’s body. It is manifest, however, 
that if God could have formed the body 

S. D.-14 


210 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

of Adam through the agency of angels, 
He could have communicated the same 
power to other agencies, if He had so 
willed. Instead, for instance, of dele- 
gating angels to form the body of the 
common father of mankind, He could, 
we may believe, have given to matter 
the power of evolving itself, under the 
action of the Divine administration, 
into all the forms of life which we now 
behold, including the body of man. 
The product of such an Evolution 
would not be a rational animal, as man 
is, but an irrational one; the highest 
and noblest representative of the 
brute creation, but, nevertheless, only 
a brute. 

Such an irrational animal, the result 
of long years of development, and the 
product of the play, during untold 
aeons, of evolutionary forces on lower 
forms of life, such a substratum it was, 
according to Mivart’s theory, into which 
the Creator breathed the breath of life 
and man forthwith “became a living 
soul.” According to this theory, then, 
God created the soul of man direct- 
ly, and his body indirectly or by the 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 211 

operation of secondary causes. In both 
cases, however, He is really and truly 
the Creator, and there is nothing in the 
theory which is in any wise derogatory 
to His power or wisdom. We simply 
admit for the body of man what we 
have seen may readily be admitted for 
the rest of the animal world — creation 
through the agency of secondary 
causes, instead of direct and immediate 
creation without the concurrence of any 
of God’s creatures. 

This view of the derivative origin of 
Adam’s body, is also quite in harmony 
with other principles laid down both by 
the great Bishop of Hippo and the 
Angel of the Schools. For they both 
taught, that in the beginning God 
created, in the absolute and primary 
sense of creation, only corporeal ele- 
ments and spiritual substances. Plants, 
animals and even man, did not exist as 
we know them — in natura propria ; but 
only potentially, receiving their full de- 
velopment afterwards — per volumina 
sceculorum. They existed only in 
what the saint calls seminal reasons 
— in rationibus seminalibus / and the 


212 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

production of the manifold forms of 
life, man included, which now adorn 
our planet, was the work of Evolution, 
viz., secondary causes acting under the 
continued and uninterrupted guidance 
of the Divine administration. 

From what precedes, it is evinced 
that the Evolution of the body of man, 
according to Mivart’s view, and the sub- 
sequent infusion into this body, by 
God, of a rational soul, is not necessarily 
antagonistic to the teachings of St. 
Thomas. The theory may, indeed, en- 
counter certain grave difficulties in the 
domains of metaphysics and Biblical 
exegesis, but I do not think it can abso- 
lutely be asserted that such difficulties 
are insuperable. 

At all events, whatever one may be 
disposed to think of the theory, it is 
well always to bear in mind that it has 
never been condemned by the Church, 
although it has been publicly discussed 
and defended for full five-and-twenty 
years. If it were as dangerous as 
some have imagined, and, still more, if 
it were heretical, as others have thought, 
it is most probable that the “Genesis 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 213 

of Species ” would have been put on the 
Index long ago. 

Views of Cardinal Gonzales. 

The late Cardinal Gonzales, that pro- 
found Thomist and man of science, 
whose untimely death the Catholic 
w T orld will mourn for a long time to 
come, who has treated so luminously the 
question of Evolution from the point of 
view of Scripture, patristic theology and 
scholastic philosophy, has suggested a 
modification of Mivart’s theory, which, 
he thinks, would make it more accept- 
able to theologians than it is as it now 
stands. If, he says, without however 
committing himself to the opinion ex- 
pressed — if, instead of affirming, as the 
English biologist does, that the body of 
Adam was nothing more than a fully- 
developed ape, into which God infused 
a rational soul, we admit that the body 
of the first man was partly the product 
of Evolution from some lower animal 
form, and partly the direct work of 
God Himself, we may thereby, he opines 
eliminate many of the objections urged 
against the theory as formulated by its 


214 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


author. According to this modified 
view, the body of man was developed 
from the inferior forms of life only until 
a certain point, but in this condition it 
was not prepared to be endowed by an 
intelligent soul. This imperfect body, 
however, this unfinished product of 
evolutionary forces, is taken in hand by 
the Almighty, who perfects what was be- 
gun, gives it the finishing touches, as it 
were, and renders it a fit habitation, 
which it was not previously, for a soul 
which was to be made to His own image 
and likeness, a soul which was to be 
dowered with the noble attributes of 
reason, liberty and immortality. 

Speaking for myself, I must confess 
that such a modification appears unnec- 
essary, and, in the light of the teach- 
ings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, 
it seems that one may as readily accept 
the theory as proposed by Mivart, as the 
restricted form of it which the distin- 
guished cardinal suggests. If we are 
to admit the action of Evolution at all, 
in the production of Adam’s body, it 
appears more consistent to admit that it 
was competent to complete the work 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 215 

which it began, than to be forced to 
acknowledge that it was obliged to 
leave off its task when only partially 
completed. For, whether we assert that 
the body of the first man was entirely, 
or only partially, the result of evolution- 
ary action, it was, in both cases, accord- 
ing to the principles we have adopted, 
the work, and ultimately the sole work, 
of Almighty God. According to Mi- 
vart’s view, the body of Adam was 
formed by God solely through the 
agency of secondary causes ; according 
to Gonzales it was formed by God 
partly through the concurrence of sec- 
ondary causes, and partly by His direct 
and immediate action. If we are to ad- 
mit that Evolution had anything what- 
ever to do with man’s corporeal frame, 
it seems more logical to admit that it 
finished the work which it began, al- 
ways, of course, under the guidance of 
the Divine administration, than to sup- 
pose that God gave to His secondary 
agents a work which they might com- 
mence, indeed, but which, by reason of 
limitations imposed on them, they were 
unable to complete. 


216 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

One cannot help thinking, when one 
seriously reflects on the matter, that the 
learned cardinal— and what is said of 
him may be predicated of creationists 
generally — unconsciously favors the 
very notion he wishes to oppose. He 
wishes, above all things, to safeguard 
the creative act, and bring out in bold 
relief the Divine attributes of wisdom 
and omnipotence, but he unwittingly, it 
would seem, makes greater demands 
than his case requires. Indeed, it strikes 
me that those who hold the special cre- 
ation theory as to the body of the father 
of our race, and the same may be said of 
believers in the special creation of the 
forms of life below man, constitute them- 
selves defenders of the very theory which 
the great St. Athanasius, full fifteen cen- 
turies ago, felt called upon to criticise 
adversely. Arguing against the anthro- 
pomorphic views which the heathen en- 
tertained of the Almighty, he contended 
that the God of the Christians is a Cre- 
ator, not a carpenter — /crtVny? ob re/vtny?. 
In accord with the illustrious Alexan- 
drian Doctor’s view, it has been truthfully 
observed that: “The Great Architect 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 


217 


theory in theology is the analogue 
of the emboitement theory in science. 
Both were invented when mechanism 
dominated thought, and we have out- 
grown both.” 

In commenting on Mivart’s theory, 
the erudite Cardinal Archbishop of Se- 
ville manifests his characteristic liberal- 
ity and breadth of view, strikingly re- 
sembling in this respect his immortal 
master, the Angel of the School : 

“As the question stands at present,” he 
says, “ we have no right to reprobate or 
reject, as contrary to Christian faith, or as 
contrary to revealed truth, the hypothesis 
of Mivart; the hypothesis, namely, which 
admits the possibility that the body of 
the first man, the organism which re- 
ceived the rational soul created by God, 
and infused into Adam, was a body 
which received an organization suitable 
for the reception of the human soul, not 
directly and immediately from the hand 
of God, but in virtue of the action of 
other antecedent animated beings, more 
or less perfect and similar to man in 
bodily structure.” 

Elsewhere he declares : 

“ I should not permit myself to cen- 
sure the opinion of the English the- 
ologian so long as it is respected, or at 


218 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

least tolerated, by the Church, the sole 
judge competent to fix and qualify the- 
ologico-dogmatic propositions, and de- 
cide regarding their compatibility or 
incompatibility with Holy Scripture.” 

From the foregoing it is evident, that 
whatever may be the final proved 
verdict of science in respect of man’s 
body, it cannot be at variance with 
Catholic Dogma. Granting that future 
researches in paleontology, anthro- 
pology and biology, shall demonstrate 
beyond doubt that man is genetically 
related to the inferior animals, and we 
have seen how far scientists are from 
such a demonstration, there will not be, 
even in such an improbable event, the 
slightest ground for imagining that 
then, at last, the conclusions of science 
are hopelessly at variance with the 
declarations of the sacred text, or the 
authorized teachings of the Church of 
Christ. All that would logically follow 
from the demonstration of the animal 
origin of man, would be a modification 
of the traditional view regarding the 
origin of the body of our first ancestor. 
Wq should be obliged to revise the 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 219 

interpretation that has usually been given 
to the words of Scripture which refer to 
the formation of Adam’s body, and read 
these words in the sense which Evolu- 
tion demands, a sense which, as we have 
seen, may be attributed to the words of 
the inspired record, without either dis- 
torting the meaning of terms or in any 
way doing violence to the text. 

Interpretation Not Revelation. 

In the consideration of questions like 
the present, we must never, be it re- 
membered, lose sight of the fact that 
interpretation is not revelation ; neither 
is revelation interpretation. Superficial 
readers are but too frequently misled 
into believing, that the declarations of 
the Bible must necessarily bear the 
meaning which commentators have 
fancied they should have, when, as a 
matter of fact, the real sense is often 
entirely different, if not, indeed, quite 
the contrary. The opinions of men may 
change, and are, of a truth, perpetually 
changing, but the declarations of the 
Holy Spirit are ever infallible and im- 
mutable. We can never too carefully 


220 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

discriminate between the truth of God’s 
revelation to His creatures, and the truth 
of our apprehension of His revelation. 
In the beginning we may have but oc- 
casional glimpses and faint adumbra- 
tions of the truth, and it often happens 
that we come into possession of the 
w’hole truth, in all its significance and 
beauty and grandeur, only after the 
lapse of long ages of persistent effort 
and tireless investigation. Hence the 
anthropomorphic and anthropocentric 
views entertained by the early inter- 
preters of Scripture respecting divers 
questions pertaining to the Deity, and 
the creatures which are the work of 
His omnipotence. Time and reflection 
and research show that such views are 
ill-founded, and substitute in their 
place a nobler conception of the Crea- 
tor, and one that is, at the same time, 
more in accordance with the teachings 
of nature and the spirit of Divine reve- 
lation. 

It is possible, although highly im- 
probable, that the evolutionary theory 
of the origin of Adam’s corporeal frame 
is one of such cases. And it is possible, 


THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 221 

too, that our successors in the en- 
joyment of light that is not vouchsafed 
to ourselves, may be willing to admit 
as a scientific doctrine, what we, at 
present, are not justified in considering 
as more than a fanciful and unwarranted 
hypothesis. Nevertheless, be this as it 
may, we must not forget what has al- 
ready been adverted to when discussing 
the derivative origin of animals and 
plants, viz., that Evolution is not a the- 
ory of creation or cause, but one of 
order and method; a modus creandi 
which the Deity was pleased to adopt. 
Of the origin of matter, of life, of spirit, 
science, as such, can give us no infor- 
mation. As to the origin of matter, 
Evolution, as a doctrine, is confessedly 
mute. 

“Of the origin of life it does not 
profess to have the slightest knowledge; 
of the character of the in-dwelling 
force, which out of the one original cell 
develops the marvelous diversity of ar- 
chitecture in the individual beings, of 
the variations which gave a start to the 
process of natural selection in the differ- 
entiation of species, it can tell us noth- 
ing; of the marvelous adaptation of the 


222 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


external conditions of the inorganic 
world to the growth and differentiation 
of organic life, it gives no account; the 
unity of all this infinite variety of de- 
velopment in one great order, having a 
continual progress towards a higher 
perfection, it sees clearly, but it cannot 
find a cause. No wonder that, as we 
have seen, those who study it most 
deeply and philosophically are driven 
to go behind it in the search after a true 
cause. . . . For clearly the devel- 

opment under fixed laws and gradual 
process of the organic world, no more 
prevents the original creative and di- 
rective Idea from being the true cause 
of all, than the passing of the individual 
being through all stages of embryonic 
existence from the simple cell, makes 
it less the creature of the Supreme 
Hand. That the archetypal idea of the 
Creative Mind may fulfill itself equally, 
whether it act directly or through in- 
termediate gradations, we can see clearly 
not only by abstract theory but by ex- 
perience of our own ‘ creations.’ 

i“Some Lights of Science on the Faith,” by Alfred 
Barry, D.D., D.C.L., pp. in and na. 



#(*■ 


CHAPTER VIII, 


TELEOLOGY, OLD AND NEW. 


The Doctrine of Final Causes. 

jRROM what precedes it is evident, 
^ that the most that Evolution can do 
is to substitute derivative for special 
creation, a substitution which, as we 
have learned, can be admitted without 
any derogation whatever to either faith 
or Dogma. But there is yet another 
objection against Evolution, which, by 
some minds, is regarded as more serious 
than any of the difficulties, heretofore 
considered, of either philosophy or the- 
ology. This objection, briefly stated, 
is that Evolution destroys entirely the 
argument from design in nature, and 
abolishes teleology, or the doctrine of 
final causes. In the case of Darwin, for 
instance, as we learn from his “ Life 
and Letters,” he had no difficulty in 


223 


224 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


accepting derivative in lieu of special 
creation, but when it came to reconcil- 
ing natural selection and Evolution with 
teleology as taught by Paley, he felt 
that his chief argument for believing in 
God had been wrested from him entirely. 

So persuaded, indeed, have many 
naturalists and philosophers been, if we 
are to believe their own words, that 
Darwinism and Evolution have given 
the deathblow to teleology, that they 
forthwith dismiss all arguments based 
on design and final causes as utterly 
worthless. And, of those w T ho are not 
in sympathy with Christianity, we find 
not a few who are unable to conceal 
their exultation over what they regard 
as the inglorious and complete discom- 
fiture of the theologians. Thus Haeckel, 
in his “ History of Creation,” writes: 

“ I maintain with regard to the much- 
talked-of ‘purpose in nature,’ that it 
really has no existence but for those 
persons who observe phenomena in ani- 
mals and plants in the most superficial 
manner.” 

Btlchner boasts: 

“ Modern investigation and natural 
philosophy have shaken themselves toler- 


TELEOLOGY , OLD AND NEW. 225 

ably free from these empty and super- 
ficial conceptions of design and leave 
such childish views to those who are 
incapable of liberating themselves from 
such anthropomorphic ideas, which un- 
fortunately still obtain in school and 
church to the detriment of truth and 
science.” 

It were easy to multiply similar quo- 
tations, but the two just given are quite 
sufficient for our present purpose. 
Judging from their public utterances, 
as well as from their well-known private 
opinions, there is no mistaking the ani- 
mus of these soi-disant exponents of mod- 
ern thought. If we are to take them at 
their own words, they seem to be as 
eager, if not more eager, for the extir- 
pation of Dogma and all forms of reli- 
gious belief, as they are for the ad- 
vancement of what they denominate 
“ science.” 

A Newer Teleology. 

It would be a grave mistake, however, 
to think that Haeckel and Buchner 
truthfully reflect the opinions of scien- 
tists generally, or that the large body of 
naturalists are at one with them in pro- 
claiming that the argument from design 
s. D.— 15 


226 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

in nature is no longer tenable, or that 
Evolution and teleology are wholly in- 
compatible. So far, indeed, is this from 
being the case, that the most philosoph- 
ical of contemporary naturalists, those 
who are most competent to interpret the 
facts and phenomena of nature and to 
draw legitimate conclusions from the 
facts observed, are almost unanimous in 
declaring that the teleological argu- 
ment, not only is not weakened, much 
less destroyed, but that it is, on the con- 
trary, illustrated and corroborated in 
the most remarkable and unexpected 
manner. And strange as it may appear, 
the very one who, according to Haeckel, 
Biichner, Vogt, G. H. Lewes and 
others whose anti-theological animus is 
so marked as to require no comment, 
was supposed to have banished forever 
from science and theology, not only 
design and purpose but all final causes 
whatsoever, is the very one who, above 
all others, has put teleology on a firmer 
and a nobler basis than it ever occupied 
before. We have no longer, it is true, 
the argument as it was presented by 
Paley, and developed by Chalmers and 


TELEOLOGY , OLD AND NEW. 227 

the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises, 
but we have in its stead one that is 
grander, more comprehensive, more ef- 
fective and more conclusive. 

Professor Asa Gray, admittedly one 
of the ablest botanists of the century, 
and to the day of his death a strenuous 
and consistent advocate of the theory of 
Evolution, thus expresses himself when 
speaking of the w T ork of Charles Darwin: 

“Let us recognize Darwin’s great serv- 
ice to natural science in bringing back 
to it teleology ; so that instead of mor- 
phology versus teleology, we shall have 
morphology wedded to teleology.” 

In another place he speaks of “the 
great gain to science from his [Darwin’s] 
having brought back teleology to nat- 
ural history. In Darwinism, usefulness 
and purpose come to the front again as 
working principles of the first order ; 
upon them, indeed, the whole system 
rests.” 

“ In this system,” he continues, “ the 
forms and species in all their va- 
riety are not mere ends in themselves, 
but the whole a series of means and 
ends, in the contemplation of which 
we may obtain higher and more 


228 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

comprehensive, and perhaps worthier, 
as well as more consistent views, of 
design in nature, than heretofore.” 

In it we have “ a theory that accords 
with, if it does not explain, the principal 
facts, and a teleology that is free from 
the common objections,” for, “the most 
puzzling things of all to the old school 
teleologists are the principia of the 
Darwinian.” 

Evolution and Teleology. 

In the “ Life and Letters of Charles 
Darwin,” edited by his son, we 
read : 

“ One of the greatest services rendered 
by my father to the study of natural 
history is the revival of teleology. The 
evolutionist studies the purpose or 
meaning of organs with the zeal of the 
older teleology, but with far wider and 
more coherent purpose. He has the 
invigorating knowledge that he is gain- 
ing, not isolated conceptions of the 
economy of the present, but a coher- 
ent view of both past and present. And 
even where he fails to discover the use of 
any part, he may, by a knowledge of 
its structure, unravel the history of the 
past vicissitudes in the life of the species. 
In this way a vigor and unity is given 


TELEOLOGY , OLD AND NEW. 229 

to the study of the forms of organized 
beings, which before it lacked.” 

Prof. Huxley, who loves to pose as 
an agnostic, but who is endowed with a 
critical acumen that is possessed by 
neither Buchner nor Haeckel, affirms 
that: 

“ The most remarkable service to 
the philosophy of biology rendered 
by Mr. Darwin, is the reconciliation of 
teleology and morphology, and the ex- 
planation of the facts of both, which 
his views offer. The teleology which 
supposes that the eye, such as we see it 
in man or one of the higher vertebrates, 
was made with the precise structure it 
exhibits, for the purpose of enabling 
the animal which possesses it to see, 
has undoubtedly received its death- 
blow. Nevertheless, it is necessary to 
remember that there is a wider teleology 
which is not touched by the doctrine of 
Evolution, but is actually based upon 
the fundamental principle of Evolution.” 

To the foregoing testimonies, and 
others of like import which could easily 
be adduced in any number desired, I 
will add the matured opinion of the 
distinguished naturalist and keen met- 
aphysician, whose name has already 
figured so frequently in these pages, 


280 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

St. George Mivart. A biologist of 
marked eminence, an evolutionist of 
pronounced convictions, a theologian of 
recognized ability, no one is better 
qualified to express a judgment regard- 
ing the bearings of the Evolution 
theory on the argument from design and 
the doctrine of final causes. 

“ A careful study,” he tells us, “ of the 
inter-relation and inter-dependencies 
which exist between the various orders of 
creatures inhabiting this planet, shows 
us a yet more noteworthy teleology — 
the existence of whole orders of such 
creatures being directed to the service 
of other orders, in various degrees of 
subordination and augmentation, re- 
spectively. This study reveals to us, as 
a fact, the enchainment of all the va- 
rious orders of creatures in a hierarchy 
of activities, in harmony with what we 
might expect to find in a world, the 
outcome of a First Cause possessed of 
intelligence and will, since it exhibits, 
at the same time, both ‘ continuity * and 
‘purpose.’ It shows us, indeed, that a 
successively increasing fulfillment of 
‘ purpose ’ runs through the irrational 
creation up to man. And thus the 
study of final causes reveals to us how 
great is our dignity, and, consequently, 
our responsibility.” 


TELEOLOGY , OLD AND NEW. 


231 


Design and Purpose in Nature. 

The quotations just made from some 
of the most eminent and most philo- 
sophical of modern naturalists — and they 
are in perfect accord with the senti- 
ments of the great majority of contem- 
porary evolutionists — prove that true 
votaries of science, far from denying 
design and purpose in nature, affirm, 
on the contrary, their existence, and 
profess themselves unable to account 
for the facts and phenomena of the visi- 
ble universe without postulating a First 
Cause, the Creator and Ordainer of all 
the beauty and harmony we so much 
admire, both in organic and in inorganic 
nature. From these quotations, too, 
we see how erroneously the teachings 
of true science are interpreted by a 
blatant and anti-religious minority, and 
what a grievous injustice is done to the 
real representatives of science, by those 
whose chief object seems to be to 
foment discord between science and 
religion, and to intensify an odium the- 
ologicum on one hand, and provoke an 
odium scientificum on the other, which 


232 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


are both as silly as they are unwar- 
ranted. It spite of all that may be said 
to the contrary, the unbiased and rever- 
ent student must see in nature the evi- 
dence of a Power which is originative, 
directive, immanent; a Power which is 
intelligent, wise, supreme. And, not- 
withstanding the asseverations of the 
noisy and supercilious few, who are 
notorious rather for their fanciful 
theories than prominent for genuine 
contributions to science, no serious in- 
vestigator can fail to discern, in the 
world of beauty and usefulness with 
which we are surrounded, the most con- 
clusive evidence that what we denomi- 
nate the laws of nature must have existed 
in idea before they existed in fact; must 
have existed in the mind of a supreme, 
creative Intelligence, as the realities 
which we now observe and coordinate . 1 
Evolution, therefore, far from weakening 
the argument from design, strengthens 

i Paley, in referring to those who speak of law 
as if it were a cause, very pertinently remarks : “ It 
is a perversion of language to assign any law as the 
efficient, operative cause of anything. A law pre- 
supposes an agent, for it is only the mode accord- 
ing to which the agent proceeds ; it implies a 
power, for it is the order according to which that 


TELEOLOGY , OLD AND NEW. 233 

and ennobles it; and far from banishing 
teleology from science and theology, 
illustrates and corroborates it in the 
most admirable manner. And despite 
all attempts to connect teleology with 
Pantheism or Materialism, or to make 
Evolution subserve the cause of Athe- 
ism or Agnosticism, the result has been 
that we have now a higher, a subtler, a 
more comprehensive teleology than the 
world has ever before known. We 
have a teleology which is indissolubly 
linked with the teachings of revealed 
truth; a teleology which, while receiv- 
ing light from Evolution, illumines, in 
turn, this grand generalization, and 
shows us that Evolution when properly 
understood, is a noble witness to a God 
who, unlike the God of the older Deism, 
that “ simply sets the machine of the 
universe in motion, and leaves it to 
work by itself,” is, on the contrary, One 
who, in the language of Holy Scripture, 
is not only “ above all, but through all, 
and in all.” 

power acts. Without this agent, without this 
power, which are both distinct from itself, the law 
does nothing, is nothing.” “Natural Theology,” 
p. 12. 


CHAPTER IX. 


RETROSPECT, REFLECTIONS AND 
CONCLUSION. 

Evolution Not a New Theory. 

E may now, before concluding, 



take a survey of the ground over 
which we have traveled and make a few 
reflections which are naturally suggested 
by the discussions which precede. 

First of all, then, the evolutionary 
idea is not, as we have learned, the late 
development it is sometimes imagined 
to be. On the contrary, it is an idea 
that had its origin in the speculations of 
the earliest philosophers, and an idea 
which has been slowly developed by 
the studies and observations of twenty- 
five centuries of earnest seekers after 
truth. 

In reading over the history of Greek 
philosophy, we are often surprised to see 
how the sages of old Hellas anticipated 
many of the views which are nowadays 


234 


REFLEbTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 235 

so frequently considered as the re- 
sult of nineteenth century research. 
With limited means for penetrating the 
arcana of Nature, they frequently ac- 
complished what we should deem im- 
possible without the aid of microscope 
and telescope. They are often re- 
proached with being simple, a priori 
reasoners, fanciful speculators and for- 
tunate guessers at the truth; but they 
were far more than this. They did not, 
it is true, have at hand the wonderful 
instruments of precision which we now 
possess, but they had a keenness of per- 
ception and a faculty for getting at the 
heart of things, which probably have 
never been equaled and certainly never 
surpassed. At times, indeed, their in- 
tuition amounted almost to divination, 
and instead of being simple votaries of 
science, the philosophers of those days 
were rather its prophets . 1 

No; it is a mistake to suppose that 
the theory of Evolution, whether cosmic 
or organic, is something new and the 

1 For a more exhaustive account of the contri- 
butions of Greek philosophy to the theory of Evo- 
lution see “ Evolution and Dogma,” Part I. 


236 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


product solely of modern research. It 
is something old, as old as speculative 
thought, and stripped of all explana- 
tions and subsidiary adjuncts, it is now 
essentially what it was in the days of 
Aristotle, St. Augustine, and the Angel 
of the Schools. Modern research has 
developed and illustrated the theory, 
has given it a more definite shape and 
rendered it more probable, if indeed it 
has not demonstrated its truth, but the 
central idea remains practically the same 
as it was when “ the master of those that 
know — il maestro cli color chesanno” as 
Dante calls Aristotle — indited his works 
on “ Physics,” and the “ History of Ani- 
mals,” and when the great Bishop of 
Hippo penned his w r ondrous treatises 
on “Genesis” and “The Trinity.” In- 
deed, we can say of Evolution what 
Lord Bacon said of natural science 
in the beginning of the seventeenth 
century : 

“If,” says he, “ the natural history ex- 
tant, though apparently of great bulk 
and variety, were to be carefully weeded 
of its fables, antiquities, quotations, friv- 
olous disputes, philosophy, ornaments, 
it would shrink to a slender bulk.” 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 237 

Similarly might we affirm, and with 
equal truth, if Evolution were to be sepa- 
rated from all the theories and fantastical 
speculations which in the minds of many 
are an essential part of it, very little, at 
least as to its principles, would remain, 
which was unknown to Aristotle, Greg- 
ory of Nyssa, Augustine and Thomas 
Aquinas. 

Darwinism Not Evolution. 

Darwinism, as has already been re- 
marked, is not Evolution; neither is 
Lamarckism nor Neo-Lamarckism. The 
theories which go by these names, as 
well as sundry others, are but tentative 
explanations of the methods by which 
Evolution has acted, and of the proc- 
esses which have obtained in the 
growth and development of the organic 
world. They may be true or false, 
although all of them undoubtedly con- 
tain at least an element of truth, but 
whether true or false, the great central 
conception of Evolution remains un- 
affected. Whether natural selection 
has been the chief agent in the Evolu- 
tion of plants and animals, as Darwin 


238 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

and Wallace contend, or whether the 
influence of activity and environment 
has been a more potent factor, as La- 
marck and Cope maintain, is as yet 
uncertain. But be this as it may, it 
matters not. It is still far from certain 
that we have discovered the leading 
factor or factors of Evolution. All 
theories so far advanced to account for 
the phenomena of change and develop- 
ment, are at best but guesses and pro- 
visional hypotheses; and no serious 
man of science claims that they are any- 
thing more. They have unquestionably 
contributed much towards the advance- 
ment of the science of biology, and have 
enabled naturalists to group together 
facts which were formerly considered as 
disparate and irreconcilable. They have 
suggested explanations of phenomena 
that were shrouded in mystery, and en- 
abled us to perceive in nature a unity 
of plan and purpose, which, without 
such theories, would either be obscured 
or entirely elude our view. 

Much, undoubtedly, remains yet to 
be done, but no one who is familiar 
with the history of science in the past 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 239 

half century, can deny that marvels 
have been accomplished during this 
time, and that a flood of light has been 
thrown on some of the most puzzling 
problems of natural science. Whatever 
value, then, we may attach to the 
theories of Lamarck and Salnt-Hilaire, 
of Darwin and Wallace and Mivart, no 
one can deny that they are entitled to 
a lasting debt of gratitude for their 
brilliant researches, and for their untir- 
ing zeal and signal success in collecting 
and coordinating facts in a way that 
has never before been accomplished. 
Whether their theories be all that has 
been claimed for them or not, they have 
certainly popularized an idea which 
prior to their promulgation interested 
but a few, and given to the study of 
science an impetus which it had never 
before experienced. They have given 
to the evolutionary idea a relief, and 
endowed it with a fascination, which 
have captivated the world. They have 
inspired among the masses a love of 
nature which did not previously exist, 
and have stimulated investigation and 
spurred on progress in a manner to win 


240 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


the admiration and extort the plaudits 
of the most indifferent and phlegmatic. 
As to the authors of these theories, they 
have ushered in a new era, and are the 
kings and prophets of the most active 
and most prolific period of research that 
the world has yet witnessed. Others 
will come after them who will correct 
their errors and improve on their 
theories, but the triumphs of these 
pioneers of the renaissance of science 
will endure with undiminished lustre 
as long as there shall remain an annalist 
to record the achievements of human 
progress. 


Evolution in the Future. 

What shall ultimately be the fate of 
the arguments now so confidently ad- 
vanced in favor of Evolution by its 
friends, and against it by its enemies, 
only the future can decide. The 
grounds of defense and attack will, no 
doubt, witness many and important 
changes. Future research and discovery 
will reveal the weakness of arguments 
that are now considered unassailable, 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 241 


and expose the fallacies of others which, 
as at present viewed, are thoroughly 
logical. But new reasons in favor of 
Evolution will be forthcoming in pro- 
portion as the older ones shall be modi- 
fied or shown to be untenable. And, as 
the evolutionary idea shall be more 
studied and developed, the objections 
which are now urged against it, will, I 
doubt not, disappear or lose much of 
their cogency. New theories will be 
promulgated, new explanations of pres- 
ent difficulties will be suggested, and a 
clearer knowledge will be vouchsafed 
of what are the real, if not the chief 
factors, of the vast evolutionary proc- 
esses which are at the bottom of all 
forms of organic development. As in 
physics so also in biology; continued 
investigation of facts and phenomena is 
sure to issue in a clearer and truer view 
of nature, and of the agencies which 
have been instrumental in bringing 
animated nature from its primordial to 
its present condition. And every new 
discovery, every new fact brought to 
light and correlated with facts already 
known, will mean a step forward; will 
s. D.— 16 


242 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


betoken progress, knowledge and en- 
lightenment. 

Evolution Not Antagonistic to Religion. 

Yet more. In proportion as Evolu- 
tion shall be placed on a solider foun- 
dation, and the objections which are now 
urged against it shall disappear, so also 
will it be evinced, that far from being 
an enemy of religion, it is, on the con- 
trary, its strongest and most natural 
ally. Even those who have no sym- 
pathy with the traditional forms of be- 
lief, who are, in principle, if not per- 
sonally, opposed to the Church and her 
dogmas, perceive that there is no neces- 
sary antagonism between Evolution and 
faith, between the conclusions of 
science and the declarations of revela- 
tion. Indeed, so avowed an opponent 
of Church and Dogma as Huxley in- 
forms us that: 

“ The doctrine of Evolution does not 
even come into contact with Theism, 
considered as a philosophical doctrine. 
That with which it does collide, and 
with which it is absolutely inconsistent, 
is the conception of creation which theo- 
logical speculators have based upon 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION 243 

the history narrated in the opening book 
of Genesis.” 

In other words, Evolution is not 
opposed to revelation, but to certain 
interpretations of revelation. It is not 
opposed to the dogmas of the Church, 
but to the opinions of certain indi- 
vidual exponents of Dogma, who would 
have us believe that their views of the 
Inspired Record are the veritable ex- 
pressions of Divine truth. 

To say that Evolution is agnostic or 
atheistic in tendency, if not in fact, is 
to betray a lamentable ignorance of 
what it actually teaches, and to display a 
singular incapacity for comprehending 
the relation of a scientific induction to a 
philosophical — or, more truthfully, an 
anti-philosophical — system. The sim- 
ple assertion of Haeckel and his school, 
that Evolution implies the monistic or 
mechanical theory of the universe, 
proves nothing, for assertion is not 
proof. Rather should it be affirmed 
that Evolution, in so far as it is true, 
makes for religion and Dogma; because 
it must needs be that a true theory of 
the origin and development of things 


244 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 

must, when properly understood and 
applied, both strengthen and illustrate 
the teachings of faith. 

Evolution does, indeed, to employ the 
words of Carlyle, destroy the concep- 
tion of “ an absentee God, sitting idle, 
ever since the first Sabbath, at the out- 
side of His universe and seeing it go.” 
But it compels us to recognize that 
“ this fair universe, were it in the mean- 
est province thereof, is, in very deed, 
the star-domed city of God; that through 
every star, through every grass-blade, 
and most, through every living soul, the 
glory of a present God still beams.” 

Objections Against New Theories. 

It is true, indeed, as we have already 
learned, that Evolution has been de- 
cried, even by men of marked ability, as 
leading to Atheism or Materialism. But 
similar charges have also been made 
against other theories and generaliza- 
tions which are now universally ac- 
knowledged as true. 

Anaxagoras, it will be remembered, 
was condemned as a heretic for assert- 
ing that the sun, the great god Helios, 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 245 

was but a mass of molten matter. Spec- 
troscopy has vindicated him, and shown 
that his accusers were in error. Aris- 
tarchus was accused of impiety for hav- 
ing taught that the earth revolves round 
the sun, and for having anticipated a 
theory independently discovered and 
developed eighteen centuries later by 
Copernicus. The Samian astronomer 
was charged with having “ disturbed 
the repose of Vesta,” and the worship- 
pers of the offended goddess accord- 
ingly suppressed or destroyed his sacrile- 
gious works. 

Newton’s great laws of universal 
gravitation, w T hen first promulgated, w r ere 
looked upon with suspicion, and, in 
some instances, denounced as atheistic. 
Even so great a mathematician and phi- 
losopher as Leibnitz, did not hesitate to 
condemn Newton’s grand discovery, 
“ not only as physically false, but as in- 
jurious to the interests of religion.” 

All are familiar with the absurd ob- 
jections urged against the heliocentric 
theory as advocated by Galileo. Lord 
Bacon rejected it with contempt, and 
even the distinguished astronomer, Ty- 


246 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

cho Brahe, notwithstanding all the evi- 
dence offered in favor of the Copernican 
system, invented one of his own which 
was but a modification of Ptolemy’s and 
no less complex and cumbersome. 

Galileo and the Copernican Theory. 

It is often said, even by those who 
should be better informed, that the 
greatest obstacle in the way of the gen- 
eral acceptance of the Copernican the- 
ory was the Church, and that the cause 
of all of Galileo’s woes was the ignorant 
officials of the Inquisition. The fact is, 
however, that it was not churchmen, as 
such, who were opposed to the views 
which Galileo so ardently and so suc- 
cessfully championed. It was rather 
the old peripatetic system of philosophy, 
which, after dominating the world of 
thought for two thousand years, saw 
itself finally face to face with what, it 
was felt on all sides, was destined to 
prove the most formidable adversary it 
had yet encountered. For the Ptole- 
maic system was so closely bound up with 
the philosophy of Aristotle, and this in 
turn was so intimately connected with 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 247 

theology, especially since the time of 
St. Thomas Aquinas, that any attack on 
the geocentric system was at once re- 
garded as an onslaught on both philoso- 
phy and theology. So great, indeed, 
was the authority of the “Master,” as 
Aristotle was called, and so long had 
his dicta been accepted without ques- 
tion, that in the minds of many it was 
almost as impious to assail his opinions 
as it was to attack the dogmas of faith. 

One of the fundamental teachings of 
the Stagirite was, for instance, that 
concerning the incorruptibility and im- 
mutability of the heavens. Galileo’s 
telescopic discoveries showed that this 
opinion was not based on fact. He 
proved that “the heavens can change 
and lay aside their former aspects, and 
assume others entirely new; ” and in 
doing this, he gave a death blow to one 
of the leading tenets on which peripa- 
tetics generally had so long set such 
store. Learned professors at Pisa, Pa- 
dua and Bologna, tried to silence the 
illustrious Florentine by the profuse 
use of syllogisms and to disprove the 
truth of his observations by a priori 


248 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE 

reasonings. He was declared by others 
to be the victim of strange optical illu- 
sions, and, accordingly, it was asserted 
that the spots on the sun, and the satel- 
lites of Jupiter and the variable stars 
had no existence outside of the observ- 
er's diseased imagination. Aristotel- 
ians indignantly denied the existence 
of sun-spots, because, said they: “It is 
impossible that the eye of the universe 
could suffer from ophthalmia.” For an 
equally trivial reason they rejected 
Kepler’s great discovery of the acceler- 
ated and retarded motions of the 
planets in different parts of their orbits. 
“ It is undignified,” they declared, “ for 
heavenly bodies to hurry and slacken 
their pace in accordance with the law 
of the German astronomer.” Aristotel- 
ianism, it was almost universally 
agreed, was to be safeguarded at all 
hazards, and Galileo, Kepler and other 
innovators, who thus ruthlessly tram- 
pled under foot the philosophy of the 
master — “ Si calpestci tutta la Jilosofia 
c VAristotele ” — w T ere to be vanquished 
at whatever cost, for if they were al- 
lowed to continue their sacrilegious 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 249 

work, they would eventually under- 
mine, not only philosophy and theology, 
but also sacred Scripture as well. 

A quotation from one Sizzi, a learned 
astronomical authority of the time, will 
serve to exhibit the puerile character of 
some of the reasons adduced in favor of 
the old system and against the new. 
Galileo having, by the aid of his tele- 
scope, discovered the satellites of Jupi- 
ter, Sizzi argued against the existence 
of such bodies as follows : 

“ There are seven windows given to 
animals in the domicile of the head, 
through which the air is admitted to the 
tabernacle of the body, viz., two nostrils, 
two eyes, two ears and one mouth. So, in 
the heavens, as in a macrocosm, or great 
world, there are two favorable stars, Jupi- 
ter and Venus; two unpropitious, Mars 
and Saturn; two luminaries, the sun and 
moon, and Mercury alone undecided 
and indifferent. From these and many 
other phenomena of nature, which it 
were tedious to enumerate, we gather 
that the number of planets is necessarily 
seven. Moreover, the satellites are in- 
visible to the naked eye, and therefore, 
can exercise no influence over the earth, 
and would, of course, be useless; and 
therefore do not exist.” 


250 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

Such things appear to us childish and 
absurd in the extreme; but after all they 
are but a fair sample of the reasons which 
were offered by many of the astronomers 
and philosophers of the time, against the 
innovations and scientific heresies of 
Copernicus and Galileo. When one 
calls to mind what extravagant errors 
have been defended in the name of 
Aristotelian philosophy, and what un- 
told mischief a priori reasoning has 
effected in the domain of experimental 
science ; when we understand the tem- 
per of mind of those who taught and 
speculated three centuries ago, we need 
not be surprised at the many strange 
things they said and did. We see in 
their opinions and conduct but a reflex 
of what is always observed in the prog- 
ress of knowledge and in the dissipa- 
tion of ignorance. The much talked-of 
warfare between science and religion is 
something that does not exist. The war- 
fare is between truth and error, between 
science and theory. In Galileo’s case, 
as we have seen, it was Copernicanism 
versus Aristotelianism; a priori reason- 
ing against observation and experi- 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 251 

ment; the syllogism against the tele- 
scope. 

Conservatism in Science. 

And more than this. The same ob- 
jections that were brought against Gali- 
leo and heliocentrism, were urged 
against Laplace and the nebular hy- 
pothesis; against Joule, Mayer, Faraday, 
Liebig, Carpenter and Helmholtz, on 
account of their demonstrations of the 
grand doctrine of the conservation and 
correlation of the various physical forces. 
The truth is, men are loath to give up a 
pet theory, especially when they are 
once committed to it, and when the 
shadow of a great name gives to it an 
air of certainty, if not of infallibility. 
As a result of this tenaciousness of 
opinion, and of a conservatism which was 
far more marked formerly than it is at 
present, truth advances slowly and 
science is obliged to contest every step 
forward. For this reason the enemy of 
science has not been religion, as is so 
often declared, but science itself, or 
what for the time was accepted as sci- 
ence. In like manner those who im- 
peded the advance of science were not 


252 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

the representatives of the Church, as 
such, but the advocates of some theory 
or the adherents of some school or sys- 
tem of thought. For generally, if not 
always, those who are accused of oppos- 
ing the advancement of science, and who 
may actually be in error in matters 
scientific, are as zealously laboring, so 
far as their lights go, in the interests of 
science, as those who have the truth on 
their side. The enemies of Galileo, for 
instance, imagined that they were doing 
the greatest possible service to science 
in battling as they did for Peripatetic- 
ism and Ptolemaism. But if they had 
had before them the same evidences of 
the truth which we at present possess, 
they would have made no hesitation in 
acknowledging their mistakes, or rather, 
they would never have fallen into the 
errors for which they are now condemned. 

Conflict of Opinions Beneficial. 

In the long run, however, the conflict 
of opinions in questions of science, far 
from having a pernicious, has a bene- 
ficial influence on the advancement of 
knowledge. It stimulates investigation 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 253 

and discovery, and serves to place the 
truth in such a light as no longer to 
admit of contradiction. 

The long-fought battle on the sub- 
ject of spontaneous generation is a case 
in point. Pasteur and Van Beneden 
have proven by their epoch-making re- 
searches, that so far as experiment can 
give any information on the subject, 
abiogenesis is a chimera. But while we 
cheerfully accord to these great savants 
all the encomiums to which they are 
entitled, we should not withhold from 
their great antagonists, Pouchet and 
Bastian, the meed of praise which their 
researches have earned for them. The 
latter were mistaken in their views, it is 
true; they were vanquished in the con- 
troversy which they carried on so ably; 
but, by the very force and originality of 
their objections, they contributed ma- 
terially, though indeed indirectly, 
towards putting the truth in a bolder 
relief than it would otherwise have 
received. Had not Pasteur met with 
the contradictions he did, had he not 
been obliged to confute objections of all 
kinds, objections presented in the name 


254 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


of chemistry, objections urged in the 
name of biology, objections advanced 
in the name of metaphysics, he would 
undoubtedly have discontinued his in- 
vestigations much sooner than he did, 
and would have rested satisfied with his 
earlier and simpler proofs of the unten- 
ableness of spontaneous generation. 

All glory, therefore, to Galileo and 
Pasteur for their brilliant achievements! 
But while sounding the praises of the 
victors, let us not forget the honors due 
to those who battled long and gallantly 
only to suffer defeat in the end. By 
the very persistence and stubbornness 
of their contest, they enhanced not 
only the splendor of the results obtained 
by their conquerors, but they also 
labored effectually, albeit indirectly, 
for the attainment of the same object 
which was had in view by their antag- 
onists — the truth, the advancement of 
science and the placing of it on a surer 
and firmer foundation. 

Evolution and Creationism. 

Will it not be the same in the still 
greater and longer contest between 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 255 

creationism, in the sense of special crea- 
tionism, and evolutionism? From what 
precedes it appears almost certain that 
our reply must be in the affirmative. 
And when the smoke of battle shall 
have cleared away; when all animosity 
shall have been extinguished, and men 
shall have a concern only for the truth, 
and not for certain individual opinions; 
when they shall be more disposed to 
conserve the interests of genuine science 
than those of mere hypothesis; then will 
it be evident to the world that both 
victors and vanquished were making 
for the same objective point, all accord- 
ing to their lights, and that the very 
earnestness and perseverance with which 
those in the wrong led a forlorn hope, 
but contributed in the end towards 
making the truth more conspicuous and 
towards rendering the stronghold of 
science more impregnable. Then, too, 
it will be manifest, that although truth 
was on the side championed by Aris- 
totle, Sts. Athanasius, Gregory of 
Nyssa, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, 
by Buffon, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, La- 
marck, Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Mivart 


256 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

and their compeers, nevertheless the 
opponents of the evolutionary idea, the 
Fathers and Schoolmen who favored the 
doctrine of special creation, the Lin- 
naeuses, the Cuviers and the Agassiz’s, 
who resolutely and consistently com- 
bated Evolution to the last, were all 
along but helping on and corroborating 
what they were intent on weakening 
and destroying. In this case, as in so 
many others, history but repeats itself 
and demonstrates again, that opposition 
may be a source of strength, and con- 
tradiction the most effective means of 
securing certitude and light. For we 
must bear in mind that it is not mis- 
taken theory that retards the progress 
of science, but rather erroneous ob- 
servations. All working scientists are 
aware, often to their cost, that it is 
inaccurate or mistaken observations 
which lead men astray, while erro- 
neous theories have often a most stim- 
ulating effect. They suggest and 
provoke new and more exact observa- 
tions, and thus lead up to true theories 
and ultimately to a true knowledge of 
nature. 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 257 


Errors in the Infancy of Science. 

It is indeed a difficult matter for 
those who live in the closing years of 
the nineteenth century, duly to appre- 
ciate the mental attitude of those who 
lived and taught a thousand or two 
thousand years ago. It is difficult even 
for us to account for the extravagant 
views held by distinguished scientists of 
comparatively recent times, by such 
men, for example, as Kepler, Stahl, 
Kircher, Buckland and others of their 
contemporaries. We smile at the fan- 
tastic notions which they entertained 
respecting some of the most ordinary 
phenomena of astronomy, chemistry, 
biology and geology. But we forget 
that we are living in the full effulgence 
of inductive science, and that we have 
the benefit of the labors of thousands 
and tens of thousands of investigators in 
every department of thought. We for- 
get that Kepler and Kircher and their 
collaborators lived in the infancy of 
science; that they had to blaze the way 
for their successors, and that, notwith- 
standing their best efforts to arrive at 
s. D.— 17 


258 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

the truth, error was inevitable. Igno- 
rant of countless facts now known to 
every schoolboy, and unacquainted with 
the theories and laws which are now the 
common possession of all who read and 
think, it was but natural that they 
should have had recourse to explanations 
and hypotheses which we should at 
present regard as fanciful and absurd. 

Thus, Kepler taught that the heav- 
enly bodies were guided in their orbits 
by angels. Water, it was universally 
believed, would not rise in a pump 
above a certain height because nature 
abhors a vacuum. Fossils, it was 
thought, were but outlines of future 
creations which the great Artificer had 
cast aside, or objects placed in the 
tilted and contorted strata of the earth 
“ to bring to naught human curiosity.” 

The statements regarding animals 
found in the “ Physiologus ” and in the 
“ Bestiaries,” allegorical works much 
esteemed during the Middle Ages, were 
accepted as veritable facts, and believed 
as firmly as were the ludicrous stories 
of Pliny, the naturalist. For a thou- 
sand years and more, even those who 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 259 

professed to teach natural history saw in 
the fables regarding the dragon and the 
unicorn, the phoenix and the basilisk, 
the hippogriff and the centaur, nothing 
to stagger their faith and nothing that 
was inconsistent with the science of the 
times. They believed without question 
that the phoenix rose from its ashes, that 
the pelican nourished its young with 
its blood, that the salamander could 
quench fire, that the basilisk killed ser- 
pents by its breath and men by its 
glance, and many similar things equally 
preposterous. 

The frame of mind, even of the most 
intelligent men, was such, that the 
extraordinary tales of Marco Polo and 
Sir John Mandeville were credited as 
readily as the most ordinary facts of 
history or biography. It was indeed 
difficult to exaggerate the powers or 
marvels of animated nature to such an 
extent that they would be pronounced 
unworthy of credence. But the world 
has moved since the times of Polo and 
Mandeville. Science has made won- 
drous strides forward since the days 
of Kepler and Kircher. Men are 


260 scimce and doctrine . 

now more familiar with the laws 
and processes of the organic world, 
and have learned to recognize the 
value and necessity of careful obser- 
vation on the part of the votaries of 
science. 

And in proportion as our knowledge 
has widened, and become more precise, 
so likewise have our conceptions of 
nature and of the Deity’s methods of 
work been modified and exalted. We 
no longer look upon God as an archi- 
tect, a carpenter, an artificer; one who 
must plan and labor in a human fashion, 
as He was contemplated in the infancy 
of our race, when the knowledge of the 
universe was much more circumscribed 
than it is at present. We now regard 
Him as a Creator in the highest and 
truest sense of the term; as one who 
“protects and governs by His Provi- 
dence all things which He hath made,” 
and who “ reacheth from end to end 
mightily and ordereth all things 
sweetly.” 

Science Not Omnipotent. 

But although science has made mar- 
velous advances during recent times, 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 261 

especially during the present century, 
and although Evolution has contributed 
in a wonderful manner towards unify- 
ing what was before a heterogeneous 
mass of almost unintelligible facts, 
science is not omnipotent, nor is Evo- 
lution competent to furnish a key to 
all the mysteries of nature. To judge 
from the declarations of some of the 
best known representatives of modern 
thought, science was to replace reli- 
gion and the Church, and to do far 
more for the welfare and elevation of 
humanity than the Gospel and its min- 
isters are capable of effecting. Renan 
declares, that it is “ science which will 
ever furnish man with the sole means 
of bettering his condition.” Again he 
assures us, that u to organize humanity 
scientifically is the last word of mod- 
ern science, its daring but legitimate 
aim.” Science, we were told but a 
few decades ago, would suppress the 
supernatural, remove mysteries and ex- 
plain miracles. It would tell us all 
about the origin of things; the world, 
life, sensation, rational thought. It 
would inform us about the origin of 


262 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 

society, language, morality, religion. 
It would throw light not only on the 
origin of man’s body and soul, but 
also on his ultimate destiny. It would, 
in a word, frame for us a complete 
cosmology, a complete code of ethics, 
and introduce a new religion, which 
would be as superior to Christianity 
as science is superior to superstition. 
It promised that we should one day be 
able to “ express consciousness in foot- 
pounds; ” that we should be able to 
trace the connection between “ the 
sentiment of love and the play of 
molecules; ” that we should be in a 
position to discern “human genius and 
moral aspiration in a ring of cosmical 
vapor.” Thanks to science and to 
its grand generalization, Evolution, 
old systems of thought were to be 
wiped out of existence, and we were 
to be ushered into an era of gen- 
eral enlightenment and universal prog- 
ress. 

But has science, as represented by 
Renan, Haeckel, and others of their 
way of thinking, made good its prom- 
ises? Has it been able to dispense 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 263 

with a personal God, and to relegate 
the supernatural to the limbo “where 
entities and quiddities, the ghosts of 
unknown bodies lie”? Has it, in the 
words of Virchow, succeeded in refer- 
ring the origin of life to “ a special 
system of mechanics,” or in proving 
Renan’s view that “ the harmony of 
nature is but a resultant,” and that 
“ the existence of things is but an 
affair of equilibrium”? Has the reli- 
gion which makes a God of humanity 
regarded in the abstract, or which 
evolves a Deity from the universe con- 
sidered as a whole, rendered men bet- 
ter or happier? These are questions 
which press for an answer, but which, 
fortunately, can be answered as readily 
as they are asked. 

The response to all these questions, 
collectively and severally, is a peremp- 
tory negative. It is the response which 
true philosophers and true men of 
science the world over have given all 
along. For it would be a mistake to 
imagine that the utterances of Renan, 
Haeckel, and their followers, have the 
indorsement of the worthier representa- 


264 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

tives of science, or that true science 
has ever made the pretensions claimed 
for it by some of its self-constituted 
exponents and protagonists. There are 
soi-disant scientists and true scientists, 
as well as there is a sham science and a 
science deserving the name. 

Bankruptcy of Science. 

It was in speaking of such soi-disant 
scientists and their unfulfilled promises, 
of such sham science and its boastful 
pretensions, that a brilliant member of 
the French Academy, M. Brunetiere, 
did not hesitate to declare recently 
that “science had become bankrupt.” 
Science has promised to tell us whence 
we come, what we are, whither we are 
going; but it has signally and totally 
failed to give an answer to any of these 
questions. 

Hellenists had engaged themselves to 
exhibit the whole of Christianity in the 
philosophy of Greece and Rome, and to 
pick out for us in the “Thoughts” of 
Marcus Aurelius, and the “ Manual ” of 
Epictetus, all the “ scattered members ” 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 265 

of the Sermon on the Mount. But they 
did not succeed in this, and still less 
did they succeed in explaining why the 
Sermon on the Mount has conquered 
the world, and why the “ Manual,” and 
the “ Thoughts ” of Epictetus and Mar- 
cus Aurelius have always remained 
completely sterile. 

Hebraists undertook to dissipate the 
“ irrational ” and “ the marvelous,” in 
the Bible; to exhibit it as a book like 
the “ Iliad ” or the “ Mahabahrata,” but 
the sum total of their researches has 
issued in the very opposite of what they 
anticipated, and their labors have had 
the effect of reintegrating what they 
had hoped to destroy. 

Orientalists, in their turn, promised 
to deduce Christianity from Buddhism, 
and to prove that the teachings of 
Christ were drawn wholly, or in great 
part, from the doctrines of Buddha. 
Like the Hellenists and Hebraists, how- 
ever, these orientalists failed completely 
to establish their thesis, and, far from 
throwing light on the subjects which 
they set out to clear up, they but 
plunged them into greater obscurity 


266 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


and introduced new hypotheses instead 
of reaching positive and incontestable 
conclusions. 

All along the line, the science of 
which we are speaking — the physical, 
natural, historical, and philological sci- 
ences — has shown itself incapable of giv- 
ing an answer to the very questions which 
most interest us. And still more has it 
forfeited the claim, which it has made 
during the past hundred years, to frame 
laws for the government of mankind in 
lieu of those given by Christ and His 
Church. The consequence is that all 
thoughtful men are beginning to realize 
the fact, if they did not realize it before, 
that questions of free will and moral 
responsibility are not to be settled by 
physiology, nor are rules of conduct to 
be sought for in Evolution. Hence, if 
we are to live anything more than an 
animal life, we must have something 
higher than science is able to afford; 
we must be guided by the teachings of 
the Founder of Christianity, by the sav- 
ing influence of that Church which, for 
well-nigh two thousand years, has shown 
herself the sole power capable of lifting 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 267 

man from a lower to a higher moral and 
spiritual plane. 

The net result, therefore, of a hun- 
dred years of aggressive warfare against 
the Church and religion, the outcome of 
all the flattering but misleading prom- 
ises of science in the matters which we 
have been considering, have been the 
very opposite of those intended. M. 
Brunetiere resumes the result in two 
words — and no well-informed person 
will, I think, be disposed to contradict 
his conclusions — these are : “ Science 
has lost its prestige, and religion has re- 
covered a portion of hers.” 

M. Brunetiere ’s study is pretty much 
in the same strain as Lord Salisbury’s 
much discussed address at Oxford be- 
fore the British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science. And has not 
Huxley, one of the most applauded rep- 
resentatives of science, and one of the 
staunchest defenders of Evolution, been 
forced to admit, in his celebrated Ro- 
manes Lecture, that science and Evolu- 
tion have limitations which he would 
have been loath to acknowledge but a 
few years before he made the confession 


268 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

that so startled many of his scientific 
friends? The conclusion of this studied 
effort of the noted evolutionist is, briefly 
stated, that the cosmic process, or Ev- 
olution, is utterly incompatible with 
ethical progress, or rather, the two are 
ever and essentially antagonistic. 

And Herbert Spencer, too, the great 
philosopher of Evolution, who sees the 
working of Evolution in everything; in 
the development of society, language, 
government, of worlds and systems of 
worlds, was obliged not long since to 
admit, not without reluctance we may 
be sure, that Evolution is not operating 
so rapidly as he expected it would, and 
is not fulfilling all the fond hopes he en- 
tertained regarding it as a factor of hu- 
man progress. “ My faith in free insti- 
tutions,” says he, “originally strong, 
though always formed with the belief 
that the maintenance and success of 
them is a question of popular character, 
has, in these later years, been greatly 
decreased by the conviction that the fit 
character is not possessed by any people, 
nor is likely to be possessed for ages to 
come.” 


REFLECTIONS A NR CONCL USION. 269 


Conquests of Science. 

It would be a grave mistake, how- 
ever, to imagine that, because science 
has become bankrupt in some things, 
she has lost her prestige entirely. 
Nothing could be farther from the truth. 
No one who is acquainted with the 
brilliant conquests of science during 
the present century, could entertain 
such an opinion for a moment. What 
M. Brunetiere means, and what all those 
who indorse his statements mean, is that 
she has failed by attempting what was 
beyond her competence; by essaying to 
solve problems and effect reforms that 
lie entirely within the domain of religion 
and philosophy. She has erred by con- 
founding empiricism with metaphysics, 
and become insolvent only by assuming 
liabilities that were manifestly outside 
of her sphere of action. But so long 
as she was content with her own methods, 
and confined her investigations to her 
own province, she made good all her 
promises, if she did not accomplish even 
more. A glance at the annals of science 
during the past few decades, to go back 


270 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 

no further, should satisfy the most 
skeptical on this point. She has given 
to the arts of life an impetus they never 
felt before. The forces of steam and 
electricity have received a development 
and been given applications that have 
been the marvel of the world. Nor has 
theoretical science in anywise failed to 
keep pace with the practical. Chem- 
istry, biology, astronomy, physics, ge- 
ology, aside from their practical appli- 
cations, have wonderfully extended our 
views of the universe and given us far 
nobler conceptions both of nature and 
nature’s God. 

And, paradoxical as it may appear, 
not the least noble of these conceptions 
comes to us from that very theory which, 
only a few years ago, was supposed to 
have banished forever the Creator from 
the world of reality; a theory which 
was at once the scandal of the pious and 
the incubus of the orthodox. Evolu- 
tion, it was asserted, had disproved the 
declarations of Scripture, and shown the 
inutility of a religion based on Dogma. 
It had dethroned the Almighty, had 
demonstrated that the universe is eternal, 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 271 

and that the order and beauty which we 
everywhere behold is the result of a 
fortuitous concourse of atoms. There 
is, therefore, we are told, neither design 
nor purpose in nature, and the doctrine 
of final causes, on which theologians 
were wont to lay so much stress, is 
completely and forever discredited. 

More mature reflection, however, 
shows that all these assertions are as 
rash as they are unwarranted. Never 
in the history of science have thought- 
ful students of nature felt more deeply 
the necessity of recognizing a personal 
Creator, a spiritual, intelligent First 
Cause, than at present. Never have 
men seen more clearly the necessity of 
religion, as the sole agency which is 
capable of elevating and saving human 
society from the countless dangers with 
which it is now beset. Never has the 
Divine character of the Book of books, 
been so gloriously manifested as it is 
now, after the many and furious on- 
slaughts made on it in the name of 
science and the Higher Criticism. For, 
strange to say, the very investigations 
and discoveries which it was fondly 


272 SCIENCE AND DOC'fRlNE. 

imagined would completely nullify all 
its claims to being a Divine revelation, 
far from destroying such claims have 
but strengthened them and rendered 
them more logical and consistent. 

Evidences of Design and Purpose. 

And as to the evidence of design and 
purpose in nature, it was never more 
strikingly conclusive. But believing in 
final causes does not imply, let it be 
borne in mind, that we can always dis- 
cover what is the precise purpose which 
is to be subserved by any given creature 
or organ. God has not taken us into 
His counsels, and we can at best catch 
but glimpses of His Divine plans and 
purposes. 

There are, undoubtedly, many ends 
and purposes to be answered in all 
created things, and those of which we 
can attain any knowledge may be the 
least important. As Mivart puts it : 

“Out of many, say a thousand million, 
reasons for the institution of the laws of 
the physical universe, some few are to a 
certain extent conceivable by us; and 
amongst these the benefits, material and 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 273 

moral, accruing from them to men — 
and to each individual man in every 
circumstance of his life — play a certain, 
perhaps a very subordinate, part.” 

The existence of an intelligent First 
Cause necessarily supposes that all forms 
of organization must be purposeful, once 
such forms exist, just as a world full of 
design manifestly proclaims the exist- 
ence of a Designer. 

Again, there are some who seem to 
think, if they can but find out how a 
law of nature operates, or what may be 
one of the many millions of purposes 
which an individual structure may serve, 
they have thereby eliminated the action 
of Providence, or shown it to be non- 
existent. They conclude that because, 
forsooth, they understand how a thing 
is done, that God did not do it. “ No 
matter how wonderful, how beautiful, 
how intimately complex and delicate 
has been the machinery which has 
worked, perhaps for centuries, perhaps 
for millions of ages, to bring about some 
beneficent results, if they can but catch 
a glimpse of the wheels, its Divine 
character disappears.” 

S. D.-18 


274 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

In marked contrast with the opinions 
of sciolists and professed monists, re- 
specting design and purpose in nature, 
is the view entertained by one of the 
ablest living masters of science, Lord 
Kelvin. 

“I feel profoundly convinced,” he 
declares, “ that the argument of de- 
sign has been greatly too much lost 
sight of in recent zoological specula- 
tions. Overpoweringly strong proofs 
of intelligent and benevolent design 
lie around us, and if ever perplexities, 
whether metaphysical or scientific, turn 
us away from them for a time, they come 
back upon us with irresistible force, 
showing to us, through nature, the in- 
fluence of a free will, and teaching us 
that all living things depend on one ever- 
lasting Creator and Ruler.” 

No, the argument from design has not 
been invalidated; it has been modified. 
It has not been weakened; it has been 
strengthened and expanded. Teleology 
to-day is not, indeed, the same as it was 
in Paley’s time, nor as it was when the 
authors of the Bridgewater Treatises 
lived and labored. It is now a more 
comprehensive, a more beautiful, and a 
more stimulating science. To Paley, a 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 275 

watch found on the heath by a passing 
traveler, was evidence of design and of 
a designer. To the evolutionist, the 
evidence of design is not merely a watch, 
but a watch which is capable of produ- 
cing other and better watches. To 
Paley, God was an Artificer who fash- 
ioned things directly from the materials 
at hand ; to the evolutionist, as to St. 
Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nyssa and 
St. Augustine, God is a Creator who 
makes things make themselves. To 
Paley, as to the older school of natural 
theologians, God was the direct cause 
of all that exists; to the evolutionist he is 
the Cause of causes — Causa causarum , 
of the world and all it contains. Ac- 
cording to the older view, God created 
everything directly and in the condition 
in which it now exists; according to 
Evolution, creation, or development 
rather, has been a slow and gradual 
process, demanding untold aeons for 
converting chaos into a cosmos, and for 
giving to the visible universe all the 
beauty and harmony which it now ex- 
hibits. It seems, indeed, more conso- 
nant with our ideas of God, to Whom a 


276 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

thousand years are as one day and one 
day as a thousand years, to conceive 
Him as creating all things in the be- 
ginning, and in ordering and administer- 
ing them afterwards through the agency 
of secondary causes, rather than to repre- 
sent Him as perpetually taking up a 
work which He had left unfinished, and 
bringing it to a state of perfection only 
by a long series of interferences and 
special creations. Understood in this, 
its true sense, Evolution teaches, as 
Temple phrases it, that the execution of 
God’s “ purpose belongs more to the 
original act of creation, less to acts of 
government. There is more Divine 
foresight, there is less Divine interposi- 
tion; and whatever has been taken 
from the latter has been added to the 
former.” 

Evolution, Scripture and Theology. 

Evolution accentuates design, without 
which, as Von Hartmann observes, all 
were “only a dark chaos of obstinate 
and capricious forces.” It gives a truer 
and more majestic account of causation, 
because it brings home to us the truth, 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 277 

that the facts of nature are the acts of 
God, and emphasizes the teaching of 
our faith, that the laws of nature are 
the expressions of “a supreme will and 
purpose belonging to an Eternal Mind.” 

Evolution has been denounced as 
anti-Scriptural, and yet, the most re- 
markable feature about the Genesiac 
account of creation, is the ease with 
which it lends itself to the theory of 
Evolution, that is, of creation by the 
operation of secondary causes. We 
may not, indeed, be prepared to assert 
with Naudin, that “ the cosmogony of 
the Bible from the beginning to the end 
is but an Evolution theory, and that 
Moses is the ancestor of Lamarck, Dar- 
win and all modern evolutionists,” but 
we can certainly affirm, as Canon Ham- 
ard points out, that the Sacred Text 
favors Transformism when understood 
in a theistic sense — “ le texte sacre 
favorise a certains egards la th6se trans- 
formiste entendue dans un sens spiritu- 
aliste.” 

Evolution has been condemned as 
anti-Patristic and anti-Scholastic, al- 
though Saints Gregory of Nyssa, Au- 


278 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

gustine and Thomas Aquinas, are most 
explicit in their assertion of principles 
that are in perfect accord with all the 
legitimate demands of theistic Evolu- 
tion. It suffices to recall the admirable 
passage of the Bishop of Hippo, in his 
“ De Genesi ad Litteram,” in which he 
proleptically announced all the funda- 
mental principles of modern Evolution. 
He recognized Evolution not only in 
individuals, but he also discerned its 
workings in the sum of all things. God 
did not create the world, as it now ex- 
ists, actually, actualiter , but potentially 
and causally, potentialiler et causaliter. 
Plants and animals were created virtu- 
ally, vi potentiaque causaii , before they 
received their subsequent development, 
priusquam per temporum moms exori- 
rentur. 

Evolution and Special Creation. 

In reference to the popular objections 
against Evolution that it reposes on no 
positive demonstration; that none of the 
arguments advanced in its behalf are 
conclusive; that all of them, -whether 
taken severally or collectively are vi- 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 279 

tiated by some flaw, and that, conse- 
quently, they are not of such a character 
as to command the assent of reasonable 
men, it may be observed that all of them 
can be urged with equal, and even with 
greater force against the rival of the 
Evolution theory, to wit, the theory of 
special creation . 1 Contrary to what its 
supporters would be disposed to admit, 
it has no foundation but assumption, 
and can claim no more substantial basis 
than certain postulates which are en- 
tirely gratuitous, or certain views re- 
garding the Genesiac account of crea- 
tion, the truth of which views may as 
readily and with as much reason be 
denied as it can be affirmed. For as 
the learned Abbe Guillemet declared 
before a sympathetic audience, com- 
posed of distinguished ecclesiastics and 
scholarly laymen, at the International 
Catholic Scientific Congress at Brussels, 

i According to the theory of special creation as 
formerly held, everything in the inorganic, as 
well as in the organic world, was created by God 
directly and essentially as it now appears. But as 
at present understood, special creation means 
rather that the Deity created immediately all the 
species and higher groups, of animals and plants, 
as they now exist. 


280 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


the theory of special creation, or fixism 
as he prefers to call it, explains nothing 
whatever in science. Not only this, “ it 
closes the door to all explanations of 
nature, and notably so in the domain of 
paleontology, comparative anatomy, em- 
bryology and teratology. It affords 
no clue to the significance of rudi- 
mentary organs, and tends inevitably 
to force science into a veritable cul-de- 
sac.” 

Again, it may be observed that the 
objections referred to are based not only 
on a misapprehension of the significance 
of the theory of Evolution, as well as 
that of the theory of special creation, 
but also on a misconception of the char- 
acter of the arguments which are urged 
in favor of both theories. The misap- 
prehension arises from the fact, that 
Evolution is regarded as being at best 
but a flimsy hypothesis, while special 
creation is represented as a positive 
dogma, which admits neither of doubt 
nor of controversy. The truth is, how- 
ever, that both Evolution and special 
creation are theories, and no one who is 
exact in the use of language can truth- 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 281 

fully assert that either of them is 
anything more. Evolution, I know, is 
oftentimes called a proved doctrine; but 
no evolutionist who has any regard for 
accuracy of terminology would pretend 
that the theory has passed all the re- 
quirements of a rigid demonstration, 
because he knows better than anyone 
else, that anything approaching a 
mathematical demonstration of Evolu- 
tion is an impossibility. The most that 
the evolutionist can hope for or that he 
has hitherto attained, or is likely to at- 
tain, at least for a long time to come, is 
a certain degree of probability; but such 
a degree of probability as shall give his 
theory sufficient weight to command the 
assent of anyone who is competent to 
estimate the value of the evidence of- 
fered in its support. The degree of 
probability which already attaches to 
the theory of Evolution is very great, 
as all who have taken the trouble to in- 
vestigate its claims must admit; and 
every new discovery in the realms of 
animate nature but contributes towards 
placing the theory on a firmer and more 
impregnable basis. 


282 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

Such being the case the question now 
is: Which of the two theories is the 
more probable, Evolution or special 
creation? Both of them, it must be 
admitted, rest upon a certain number of 
postulates; both of them have much to 
be said in their favor, as both of them 
may be assailed with numerous and se- 
rious objections. For our present pur- 
pose it will here suffice to repeat the 
answer of the Abbe Guillemet, who 
tells us that Evolution, as against spe- 
cial creation, has this in its favor, that it 
explains and coordinates the facts and 
phenomena of nature in a most beautiful 
and simple manner; whereas the theory 
of special creation not only explains 
nothing and is incapable of explaining 
anything, but, by its very nature, tends 
to impede research, to bar progress, or 
as he phrases it, “ it forces science into 
a blind alley — met la science dans ane 
impasse 

Genesiac Days, Flood, Fossils and 
Antiquity of Man. 

As matters now stand, the case of 
special creation versus Evolution is an- 
alogous to several other questions which 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 283 

have supplied materials for long and 
acrimonious controversy. Thus, until 
the last century it was the almost uni- 
versally accepted belief that the days 
of Genesis w r ere real solar days of 
twenty-four hours each. It was likewise 
the general opinion that the Noachian 
Deluge was universal, not only as to 
the earth’s surface but also as to the 
destruction “of all flesh, wherein is the 
breath of life, under heaven.” And 
until a few decades ago it was the cur- 
rent belief, that the advent of our race 
on earth did not date back much farther 
than four thousand years b. c., and that 
the only reliable evidence we had for 
the solution of the problem involved, 
was to be found in certain statements of 
the Sacred Text. So, too, from the 
time of Aristotle until that of Palissy 
the potter, we might say even until the 
time of Cuvier, it was believed that 
fossils were but “sports of nature,” 
“ results of seminal air acting upon 
rocks,” or “rejected models” of the 
Creator’s w r ork. 

Now it would probably be difficult, 
if not impossible, to give an absolute 


284 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


proof of the unsoundness of these views, 
and that for the simple reason that any- 
thing like a mathematical demonstra- 
tion is, by the very nature of the case, out 
of question. Rigorously speaking, the 
theories involved in the above beliefs, 
with the exception, perhaps, of that re- 
garding the antiquity of man, are sus- 
ceptible neither of proof nor of disproof. 
The most we can have, at least for the 
present, is a greater or less degree of 
probability, for it is manifest that the 
Almighty, had He so willed, could have 
created the world as it now is in six or- 
dinary days. He could have created it 
just as it exists at present in a single 
instant, for He is above and independ- 
ent of time. The teachings, however 
of geology and paleontology are dia- 
metrically opposed to the supposition 
that He did fashion this globe of ours, 
as we now see it, in six ordinary days, 
while it is found that there is nothing in 
Scripture which precludes the view that 
the days of Genesis were indefinite pe- 
riods of time. God could have caused 
the flood to cover the entire earth to the 
height of the highest mountain, and He 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 285 

could thus have destroyed every living 
thing except what was preserved in the 
ark; but did He? Ethnology, linguis- 
tics, prehistoric archaeology, and even 
Scripture, supply us with practically 
conclusive reasons for believing that He 
did not. It is within the range of pos- 
sibility, that the four thousand and 
four years allowed by Usher for the in- 
terval which elapsed between the crea- 
tion of Adam and the birth of Christ, 
are ample to meet the demands of the 
case, but it is in the highest degree im- 
probable. If the evidence of history, 
archaeology, and cognate branches of 
science have any value at all, it is al- 
most demonstrably certain that the time 
granted by Usher and his followers is 
entirely inadequate to meet the many 
difficulties which modern science has 
raised against the acceptance of such a 
limited period since man’s advent on 
earth. And, so, too, regarding fossils. 
God could, undoubtedly, have created 
them just as they are found in the earth’s 
crust, but there is no reason for believ- 
ing that He did so, while there are many 
and grave reasons for thinking that He 


286 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


did not. In the first place all prima facie 
evidence is against it. It is contrary to 
the known analogy of the Creator’s meth- 
ods of work in other instances ; contrary 
to what is a rational conception of the 
Divine economy in the plan of creation. 
It is contrary also to our ideas of God’s 
wisdom and goodness; for to suppose 
that fossils are not the remains of forms 
of life now extinct, to suppose that they 
were created as we now find them, 
would be to suppose that the Creator 
would have done something which was 
specially designed to mislead and de- 
ceive us. Against such a view we can 
assert what Suarez affirms in another 
connection, that God would not have 
designedly led us into error — Incredi- 
bile est , Deum . . . illis verbis ad 

populum fuisse locutum quibus deci- 
peretur. We see fossils now forming, and 
from what we know of the uniformity 
of nature’s operations we conclude that 
in the past, and during the lapse of long 
geologic eras, fossils have been produced 
through the agency of natural causes 
as they are produced at present, and 
that, consequently, they were not created 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 287 

directly and immediately during any of 
the Genesiac days, days of twenty-four 
hours each, as was so long and so uni- 
versally believed even by the wisest 
theologians and philosophers. 

What has been said of the traditional 
views respecting the six days of crea- 
tion, the Noachian Deluge, the antiquity 
of the human race and the nature and 
age of the fossil remains entombed in 
the earth’s crust, may, in a great 
measure, be iterated regarding the 
long-accepted view of special creation . 1 
It is possible, for there is nothing in it 
intrinsically absurd ; but in the light 
afforded by the researches and dis- 
coveries of these latter days, it is the 
conviction of the great majority of those 
who have studied the question with the 
greatest care, and who are the most 
competent to interpret the facts in- 
volved, that as between the two rival 
theories, special creation and Evolu- 
tion, the preponderance of proba- 
bility is overwhelming in favor of 

iFor an extended discussion of the Genesiac days^ • 
the Noachian deluge, the antiquity of man and the 
origin of fossils, see “ Bible, Science and Faith,” and 
“Evolution and Dogma,” Parti. 


288 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

Evolution of some kind, but of just 
what kind only the future can de- 
termine. 

Evolution, then, I repeat it, is contrary 
neither to reason nor to Scripture. And 
the same may be said of the divers 
theories of Evolution which, during these 
latter times, have had such a vogue. 
Whether, therefore, we accept the theory 
of extraordinary births, the saltatory 
Evolution of Saint-Hilaire and St. 
George Mivart ; or Darwin’s theory of 
natural selection, which takes account 
of only infinitesimal increments ; or 
Weismann’s theory of heredity, which 
traces specific changes to the germ- 
plasm, we are forced to admit that the 
ultimate efficient Cause of all the 
changes produced, be they slow or 
sudden, small or great, is the Creator 
Himself, acting through the agency of 
second causes, through the forces and 
virtues which He Himself communi- 
cated to matter in the beginning. Such 
being the case, it is obvious that Evo- 
lution does not exclude creation, and 
that creation is not incompatible with 
Evolution. 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 289 

Strictly speaking, Evolution, whether 
it progress by saltation or by minute 
and fortuitous increments, as we are 
wont to regard them, is, in the last 
resort, a kind of special creation, and, 
reason as we may, we can view it in no 
other light. The same may be said of 
spontaneous generation, or the Evolu- 
tion of organic from inorganic matter. 
For secondary or derivative creation 
implies Evolution of some kind, as 
Evolution, whether rapid or operating 
through untold aeons, demands, in the 
last analysis, the action of intelligence 
and will, and presupposes what is 
termed creation in a restricted sense, 
that is, formation from preexisting ma- 
terial. Our primary intuitions, espe- 
cially our ideas of causation, preclude us 
from taking any other view in the prem- 
ises. As reason and revelation teach, 
it was God who created the materials 
and forces which made Evolution possi- 
ble. “ It was Mind,” as Anaxagoras 
saw, “that set all things in order” — 
Kavra di£xoatxr t ff£ voos ; that from chaos 
educed a cosmos and gave to the earth 
all that infinitude of variety and beauty 
s. D.— 19 


290 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 

and harmony which we so much ad- 
mire. 

But not only is Evolution a theory 
which is in perfect accordance with 
science and Scripture, with Patristic 
and Scholastic theology; it is likewise 
a theory which promises soon to be the 
generally accepted view; the view 
which will specially commend itself not 
only to Christian philosophy, but also 
to Christian apologetics as well. We 
have seen some indications of this in the 
already quoted opinions of such emi- 
nent Catholic authorities as Monsabre, 
D’Hulst, Leroy, De Lapparent and St. 
George Mivart. 

Eminent Catholics on Evolution. 

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier’s great 
rival, and a man of profound religious 
sentiments, looked upon the succession 
of species, as disclosed by Evolution, as 
“one of the most glorious manifestations 
of creative power, and a fresh motive for 
admiration and love.” The noted Bel- 
gian geologist, D’Omalius d’Halloy, as 
distinguished for his loyalty to the 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 291 

Church as for his eminence in science, 
declares: 

“It appears to me much more prob- 
able and more conformable to the emi- 
nent wisdom of the Creator, to admit 
that, just as He has given to living 
beings the faculty of reproducing them- 
selves, so, likewise, has He endowed 
them with the power of modifying them- 
selves according to circumstances, a 
phenomenon of which nature affords us 
examples even at present.” 

Commenting on this question, the 
learned Belgian Jesuit, Father Bel- 
linck, asks: 

“ What matters it if there have 
been creations prior to that which 
Moses described; what matters it whether 
the periods required for the genesis of 
the universe were days or epochs; 
whether the apparition of man on the 
earth was at an earlier or later date; 
whether animals have preserved their 
primitive forms, or whether they have 
undergone gradual transformations; 
whether even the body of man has 
experienced modifications, and, finally, 
what matters it whether, in virtue of the 
Creative Will, inorganic matter be able 
or not to produce plants and animals 
spontaneously? 


292 * SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

“All these questions are given over 
to the disputes of men, and it is for 
science to distinguish truth from 
error.” 

These are pertinent questions. What 
matters it, indeed, from the standpoint 
of Catholic Dogma, if they are all an- 
swered in the affirmative? If science 
should eventually demonstrate that 
spontaneous generation is probable, or 
has actually occurred, or is occurring in 
our own day, what matters it? The 
Fathers and Schoolmen found no diffi- 
culty in believing in abiogenesis, and 
most of them, if not all of them, be- 
lieved in it so far as it concerned the 
lower forms of life. More than this. 
As we learned in the beginning of our 
work, spontaneous generation was al- 
most universally accepted until about a 
century ago. Materialists then be- 
thought themselves that abiogenesis 
might be urged as an argument in favor 
of Materialism. Theologians, in their 
eagerness to answer the objection, de- 
nied the fact instead of denying the 
inference. Later on, men of science 
discovered that so far as evidence goes 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 293 

abiogenesis is not a fact, and, still later, 
it dawned upon a few theologians that 
whether a fact or not, it is quite imma- 
terial so far as theology is concerned. 
Whether not-living matter may ever 
give rise to living matter, science is 
unable to state with absolute certainty, 
but should it ultimately be shown that 
spontaneous generation is a fact, we 
should simply say with the Fathers and 
Doctors of the Church: The Creator 
gave to inorganic matter the power, 
under suitable conditions, of evolving 
itself into organic matter, and thus 
science and Dogma would be in har- 
mony. 

Faith Has Nothing to Apprehend from 
Evolution. 

Suppose, then, that a demonstrative 
proof of the theory of Evolution should 
eventually be given — a proof such as 
would satisfy the most exacting and the 
most skeptical — it is evident, from what 
has already been stated, that Catholic 
Dogma would remain absolutely intact 
and unchanged. Individual theorists 
w T ould be obliged to accommodate their 


294 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

views to the facts of nature, but the 
doctrines of the Church would not be 
affected in the slightest. The hypoth- 
esis of St. Augustine and St. Thomas 
Aquinas would then become a thesis, 
and all reasonable and consistent men 
would yield ready, unconditional and 
unequivocal assent. 

And suppose, further, that in the 
course of time science shall demon- 
strate — a most highly improbable event 
— the animal origin of man as to his 
body. There need, even then, be no 
anxiety so far as the truths of faith are 
concerned. Proving that the body of 
the common ancestor of humanity is 
descended from some higher form of 
ape, or from some extinct anthropo- 
pithecus, would not necessarily contra- 
vene either the declarations of Genesis, 
or the principles regarding derivative 
creation which found acceptance with 
the greatest of the Church’s Fathers 
and Doctors. 

Mr. Gladstone, in his admirable in- 
troduction to the “ People’s Bible 
History,” expresses the same idea with 
characteristic force and lucidity. 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 295 


“If,” he says, “while Genesis asserts a 
separate creation of man, science should 
eventually prove that man sprang, by a 
countless multitude of indefinitely small 
variations, from a lower, and even from 
the lowest ancestry, the statement of 
the great chapter would still remain 
undisturbed. For every one of those 
variations, however minute, is abso- 
lutely separate, in the points wherein it 
varies, from what followed and also 
from what preceded it ; is in fact and in 
effect a distinct or separate creation. 
And the fact that the variation is so small 
that, taken singly, our use may not be 
to reckon it, is nothing whatever to the 
purpose. For it is the finiteness of our 
faculties which shuts us off by a barrier 
downward, beyond a certain limit, from 
the small, as it shuts us off by a barrier 
upward from the great; whereas for 
Him whose faculties are infinite, the 
small and the great are, like the light 
and the darkness, ‘ both alike,’ and if 
man came up by innumerable stages 
from a low origin to the image of God, 
it is God only who can say, as He has 
said in other cases, which of those stages 
may be worthy to be noted with the dis- 
tinctive name of creation, and at what 
point of the ascent man could first be 
justly said to exhibit the image of 


296 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

But the derivation of man from the 
ape, we are told, degrades man. Not 
at all. It would be truer to saj that 
such derivation ennobles the ape. Sen- 
timent aside, it is quite unimportant to 
the Christian “ whether he is to trace 
back his pedigree directly or indirectly 
to the dust.” St. Francis of Assisi, as 
we learn from his life, “ called the birds 
his brothers.” Whether he was correct, 
either theologically or zoologically, he 
was plainly free from that fear of being 
mistaken for an ape which haunts so 
many in these modern times. Perfectly 
sure that he, himself, was a spiritual 
being, he thought it at least possible 
that birds might be spiritual beings, 
likewise incarnate like himself in mor- 
tal flesh; and saw no degradation to the 
dignity of human nature in claiming 
kindred lovingly with creatures so 
beautiful, so wonderful, who, as he 
fancied, “ praised God in the forest, 
even as angels did in heaven.” 

Misapprehensions Regarding Evolution. 

Many, it may here be observed, look on 
the theory of Evolution with suspicion, 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 297 

because they fail to understand its 
true significance. They seem to think 
that it is an attempt to account for the 
origin of things when, in reality, it deals 
only with their historical development. 

It deals not with creation, with the 
origin of things, but with the modus 
creandi or, rather, with the modus for- 
mandi , after the universe was called 
into existence by Divine Omnipotence. 
Evolution, then, postulates creation as 
an intellectual necessity, for if there 
had not been a creation there would 
have been nothing to evolve, and Evo- 
lution would, therefore, have been an 
impossibility. 

And for the same reason, Evolution 
postulates and must postulate, a Crea- 
tor, the sovereign Lord of all things, 
the Cause of causes, the terminus a quo 
as well as the terminus ad quern of all 
that exists or can exist. But Evolution 
postulates still more. In order that 
Evolution might be at all possible it 
was ’necessary that there should have 
been not only an antecedent creation 
ex nihilo, but also that there should 
have been an antecedent involution, or 


298 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

a creation in potentia. To suppose 
that simple brute matter could, by its 
own motion or by any power inherent in 
matter as such, have been the sole effi- 
cient cause of the Evolution of organic 
from inorganic matter, of the higher 
from the lower forms of life, of the 
rational from the irrational creature, is 
to suppose that a thing can give what it 
does not possess, that the greater is 
contained in the less, the superior in 
the inferior, the whole in a part. 

No mere mechanical theory, there- 
fore, however ingenious, is competent 
to explain the simplest fact of develop- 
ment. Not only is such a theory unable 
to account for the origin of a speck of 
protoplasm, or the germination of a 
seed, but it is equally incompetent to 
assign a reason for the formation of the 
smallest crystal or the simplest chem- 
ical compound. Hence, to be philosoph- 
ically valid, Evolution must postulate 
a Creator not only for the material 
which is evolved, but it must also* pos- 
tulate a Creator, Causa causarum , for 
the power or agency which makes any 
development possible. God, then, not 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 299 

only created matter in the beginning, 
but He gave it the power of evolving 
into all forms it has since assumed or 
ever shall assume. 

But this is not all. In order to have 
an intelligible theory of Evolution, a 
theory that can meet the exacting de- 
mands of a sound philosophy as well as 
of a true theology, still another postu- 
late is necessary. We must hold not 
only that there was an actual creation 
of matter in the beginning, that there 
was a potential creation which rendered 
matter capable of Evolution, in accord- 
ance with the laws impressed by God 
on matter, but we must also believe 
that creative action and influence still 
persist, that they always have persisted 
from the dawn of creation, that they, 
and they alone, have been efficient in 
all the countless stages of evolutionary 
progress from atoms to monads, from 
monads to man. 

This ever-present action of the Deity, 
this immanence of His in the work of His 
hands, this continuing in existence and 
developing of the creatures He has made, 
is what St. Thomas calls the “ Divine 


300 SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 

administration,” and what is ordinarily 
known as Providence. It connotes the 
active and constant cooperation of the 
Creator with the creature, and implies 
that if the multitudinous forms of ter- 
restrial life have been evolved from the 
potentiality of matter, they have been 
so evolved because matter was in the 
first instance proximately disposed for 
Evolution by God Himself, and has ever 
remained so disposed. To say that God 
created the universe in the beginning, 
and that He gave matter the power of 
developing into all the myriad forms it 
subsequently exhibited, but that after 
doing this He had no further care for 
what He had brought into existence, 
would be equivalent to indorsing the 
Deism of Hume, or to affirming the old 
pagan notion according to which God, 
after creating the world, withdrew from 
it and left it to itself. 

As to man, Evolution, far from de- 
priving him of his high estate, confirms 
him in it, and that, too, by the strong- 
est and noblest of titles. It recognizes 
that although descended from humble 
lineage, he is “the beauty of the world, 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 301 

and the paragon of animals; ” that al- 
though from dust — tracing his lineage 
back to its first beginnings — he is of 
the “quintessence of dust.” It teaches, 
and in the most eloquent language, that 
he is the highest term of a long and 
majestic development, and replaces him 
“ in his old position of headship in the 
universe, even as in the days of Dante 
and Aquinas.” 

Evolution an Ennobling Conception. 

And as Evolution ennobles our con- 
ceptions of God and of man, so also 
does it permit us to detect new beau- 
ties, and discover new lessons, in a 
world that, according to the agnostic 
and monistic views, is so dark and hope- 
less. To the one who says there is no 
God, “ the immeasurable universe,” in 
the language of Jean Paul, “has be- 
come but a cold mass of iron, which 
hides an eternity without form and 
void.” 

To the theistic evolutionist, however, 
all is instinct with invitations to a higher 
life and a happier existence in the fu- 
ture; all is vocal with hymns of praise 


302 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE. 


and benediction. Everything is a part 
of a grand unity betokening an omnip- 
otent Creator. All is foresight, purpose, 
wisdom. We have the entire history of 
the world and of all systems of worlds, 
“ gathered, as it were, into one original, 
creative act, from which the infinite 
variety of the universe has come, and 
more is coming yet.” And God’s hand 
is seen in the least as in the greatest. 
His power and goodness are disclosed 
in the beauteous crystalline form of the 
snowflake, in the delicate texture, fra- 
grance and color of the rose, in the mar- 
velous pencilings of the butterfly’s 
wing, in the gladsome and melodious 
notes of the lark and the thrush, in the 
tiniest morning dewdrop with all its 
gorgeous prismatic hues and wondrous 
hidden mysteries. All are pregnant 
with truths of the highest order, and 
calculated to inspire courage, and to 
strengthen our hope in faith’s promise 
of a blissful immortality. 

The Divine it is which holds all things 
together : to ftswv rrjv oXrjv <poaiv. 

So taught the old Greek philosophy as 
reported by the most gifted of her 


REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 303 

votaries. And this teaching of the sages 
of days long past, is extended and il- 
luminated by the far-reaching generali- 
zation of Evolution, in a manner that is 
daily becoming more evident and re- 
markable. But what Greek philosophy 
faintly discerned, and what Evolution 
distinctly enunciates, is rendered glori- 
ously manifest by the declaration of re- 
vealed truth, and by the doctrines of 
Him who is the Light of the world. 

Science and Evolution tell us of the 
transcendence and immanence of the 
First Cause, of the Cause of causes, the 
Author of all the order and beauty in 
the world, but it is revelation which 
furnishes us with the strongest evidence 
of the relations between the natural and 
supernatural orders, and brings out in 
the boldest relief the absolute depend- 
ence of the creature on its Maker. It 
is faith which teaches us how God “ binds 
all together into Himself;” how He 
quickens and sustains “ each thing sep- 
arately, and all as collected in one.” 

I can, indeed, no better express the 
ideas which Evolution so beautifully 
shadows forth, nor can I more happily 


304 


SCIENCE AND DOCTRINE . 


conclude this long discussion than by- 
appropriating the words used long ago 
by that noble champion of the faith, St. 
Athanasius. 

“As the musician,” says the great 
Alexandrine Doctor, in his “Oratio 
Contra Gentiles,” “having tuned his 
lyre, and harmonized together the 
high with the low notes, and the middle 
notes with the extremes, makes the 
resulting music one ; so the Wisdom 
of God, grasping the universe like a 
lyre, blending the things of air with 
those of earth, and the things of heaven 
with those of air, binding together the 
whole and the parts, and ordering all by 
His counsel and His will, makes the 
world itself and its appointed order one 
in fair and harmonious perfection; yet, 
He, Himself, moving all things, remains 
unmoved with the Father.” 


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S. D.— 20 


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